What Is an IB Internal Assessment? Weighting, Deadlines & Examples

If you've just started the IB Diploma Programme, you'll hear the letters "IA" within your first week. Teachers mention IA deadlines. Older students groan about IA drafts. And parents wonder what is internal assessment, exactly, and why does it seem to matter so much?

Here's the short version. The internal assessment (IA) is coursework you complete during the course, marked by your own teacher, and checked by the IB. Every single IB Diploma subject has one. And it's worth a big slice of your final grade — usually 20% to 30% — before you ever sit an exam.

Quick answer: An IB internal assessment (IA) is a piece of independent coursework that every Diploma Programme student completes in each of their six subjects. Your teacher marks it, and the IB moderates a sample of those marks to keep schools consistent. Depending on the subject, the IA counts for 20% to 30% of your final grade — for example, 20% in Math and the sciences, 25% at SL History, and 30% at SL Economics. IAs are done during the two-year course, so a chunk of your final grade is locked in before exams even begin.

This guide is the hub for everything IA. We'll cover what the IA is, how much it's worth in every major subject, who marks it, when deadlines usually fall, and how to score well. Written by Educifly's IB subject specialists, who have coached IAs across math, sciences, and humanities since 2018.

What is an internal assessment in the IB?

An internal assessment is a compulsory piece of coursework in every IB Diploma subject, marked by your teacher and moderated by the IB. That's the one-sentence answer.

Let's unpack the name. "Internal" means the first marking happens inside your school. Your own subject teacher grades your work using official IB criteria. This is different from your final exams, which are "external" — they're shipped off and marked by IB examiners you'll never meet.

"Assessment" means it counts. The IA is not a practice task or a homework project. The mark your teacher gives (after IB moderation — more on that below) feeds directly into your final grade out of 7 for that subject.

Every subject's IA looks different. In Math, it's a written exploration of a topic you choose. In Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, it's a hands-on scientific investigation with a written report. In English, it's a spoken oral exam. In Economics, it's a portfolio of three short commentaries on real news articles. Same idea, different formats: independent work, your own topic, done during the course.

One thing the IA is not: it's not the Extended Essay (EE). The EE is a separate 4,000-word research paper that's part of the IB core and marked externally. The IA lives inside each subject. Students mix these up all the time, so it's worth being clear early.

How much is the IA worth? Weighting by subject

In most IB subjects, the internal assessment counts for 20% to 30% of your final grade. The exact number depends on the subject and whether you take it at Standard Level (SL) or Higher Level (HL).

Here's the full picture for the most popular subjects:

Notice the pattern. At SL, the IA is often worth more — up to 30% in Economics, Business Management, and English A. That's because SL students sit fewer exam papers, so the coursework carries more of the load. At HL, the IA usually settles at 20%.

The arts (Visual Arts, Music, Theatre, Film) weight coursework even more heavily than any other group, because most of the assessed work is created during the course rather than in an exam hall. If your child takes an arts subject, expect ongoing portfolio work rather than one single IA task.

Two quick notes on this table. First, weightings come from each subject's official IB guide, and the IB updates guides every seven years or so — the sciences moved to the new "scientific investigation" format for exams from 2025, for example. Second, a couple of subjects are mid-changeover (Psychology's new syllabus has its first exams in 2027), so if your school started the new course, ask your coordinator which guide applies to you.

What does the IA look like in each subject group?

Each subject group runs its IA in a distinct format, so here's what students actually produce. One sentence each, then the detail.

Math: the exploration

The Math IA is a written exploration — a short personal investigation of a mathematical topic you choose. It's usually 12–20 pages, marked out of 20, and worth 20% of your grade in both Math AA and Math AI, at both levels. Students have explored everything from the math of croissant folding to modelling a basketball free throw. The best ones connect a genuine personal interest to real mathematics at the level of the course.

Sciences: the scientific investigation

In Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, the IA is a scientific investigation: you design your own experiment, collect and analyse data, and write it up. The report has a hard cap of 3,000 words, is marked out of 24, and counts for 20% at SL and HL. Since 2025, all three sciences share this common format. You can read our full subject guides for the Biology IA and the Physics IA, including topic ideas and criterion-by-criterion advice.

History: the historical investigation

The History IA is a 2,200-word investigation into a historical question you choose, marked out of 25. It counts for a hefty 25% at SL and 20% at HL. It has three sections: a source evaluation, the investigation itself, and a reflection. Our History IA guide walks through all three, with examples of strong research questions.

Individuals and societies: commentaries, fieldwork, and reports

Economics students build a portfolio of three 800-word commentaries, each analysing a real news article through a different part of the syllabus — micro, macro, and the global economy. It's worth 30% at SL and 20% at HL, marked out of 45. Geography students write a 2,500-word fieldwork report (25% SL, 20% HL) based on data they collect on an actual field trip. Business Management students write an 1,800-word research project on a real business (30% SL, 20% HL). Psychology students write up a simple experiment.

Languages: the individual oral

In language subjects, the IA is spoken, not written. English A students give a 15-minute individual oral — a 10-minute analysis linking two texts to a global issue, then 5 minutes of questions — worth 30% at SL and 20% at HL. Language B students (French, Spanish, German, and so on) do an oral worth 25% at both levels; at SL it starts from a visual stimulus. It's recorded and can be sent to the IB for moderation, just like written IAs.

Who marks the IA? Teacher marking and IB moderation

Your teacher marks your IA first, and then the IB moderates a sample of your school's marking to make sure it matches the global standard. This two-step system is what makes "internal" assessment trustworthy.

Here's how it works, step by step:

1. You submit your final IA to your teacher by the school's deadline.

2. Your teacher marks it using the official IB criteria for that subject — the same criteria published in the subject guide that you can (and should) read yourself.

3. The school uploads the marks for all students, plus a sample of actual student work, to the IB.

4. An IB moderator re-marks the sample. If the moderator agrees with your teacher's marking, the marks stand.

5. If the moderator finds the teacher marked too generously or too harshly, the IB adjusts the marks of the whole class — up or down — to bring them in line.

That last point surprises families. Yes, your IA mark can change after your teacher awards it. If a teacher consistently over-marks, the IB scales the class down. If a teacher is tough, marks can be scaled up. This is why experienced IB teachers mark strictly to the criteria: it protects their students from painful moderation drops.

The practical lesson for students is simple. Don't chase your teacher's personal taste. Chase the published criteria. Every mark on an IA maps to a specific criterion strand, and the students who score highest are the ones who treat those criteria as a checklist.

When do students do their IAs? A typical timeline

Most IAs are started in the second half of the first DP year and finished by the middle of the second year. The IB itself doesn't set your school's internal deadlines — each school builds its own IA calendar so the work doesn't pile up.

A typical rhythm for a May-session student looks like this:

Two warnings from experience. First, deadlines cluster. A DP2 student can face the Math IA, an English oral, and a science investigation final within the same three weeks — while also finishing the Extended Essay. The students who suffer least are the ones who banked a solid draft before DP2 started.

Second, schools set earlier deadlines than the IB's own upload dates, on purpose. Teachers need time to mark, run internal checks, and handle the paperwork. So don't compare notes with a friend at another school and assume your deadline is flexible. Your school's calendar is the one that counts.

The rules: drafts, help, and academic honesty

The IA must be your own work, and your teacher can give detailed feedback on one draft only. These are the two rules every family should know before the IA season starts.

On the draft rule: teachers can discuss your topic, teach you the skills, and answer questions throughout. But formal written feedback on the full piece happens once. After that, they can't keep correcting versions until it's perfect. This is an IB regulation, not your teacher being unhelpful. It's designed to keep the playing field level between schools.

On academic honesty: every IA goes through the same integrity rules as the Extended Essay. That means:

• All sources cited, in a consistent style.

• No copying from sample IAs found online — schools run originality checks, and moderators have seen every "borrowed" Math exploration topic there is.

• No one else may write any part of it. Paying an essay mill to produce an IA is malpractice, and the IB can withhold the diploma for it.

• AI tools follow your school's policy. Schools differ, so ask before you use anything.

Getting legitimate support is fine — and normal. A tutor can teach you how to evaluate sources, how to structure a lab report, or how the criteria work, the same way a teacher does in class. What nobody can do is produce the work for you. At Educifly, IA coaching is a focused add-on programme alongside regular subject tutoring, and it works exactly within those rules: skills, structure, and criteria — your ideas, your work.

On word counts: they're hard limits, not suggestions. In most subjects, examiners stop reading at the cap — 2,200 words in History, 3,000 in the sciences, 800 per Economics commentary. Anything past the limit earns zero credit, and a bloated IA usually signals weak selection anyway. Cut ruthlessly.

Why the IA matters more than most students think

The IA is the only part of your final grade you can control completely before exam season. That's the real reason to take it seriously.

Think about what 20–30% means in practice. A subject grade out of 7 is built from your exam papers plus your IA, combined by weighting and then converted through grade boundaries. A student who walks into exams with a near-full-marks IA is carrying a cushion. A student with a weak IA needs a stronger exam performance just to reach the same grade.

Let's make that concrete with the sciences. The scientific investigation is 20% of the grade. Suppose the boundary for a 7 sits around 75–80% overall (boundaries move each session, so treat this as an illustration, not a promise). A student who scored 22/24 on the IA has banked about 18 of those percentage points already. A student who scored 12/24 banked only 10. Same exam performance, different final grades — decided months before the exam.

There's a second reason the IA deserves respect: it's where predicted grades get evidence. Teachers write university predictions in DP2, often before your final exams. A strong IA is concrete proof of your level at exactly the moment predictions are being written. For students applying to UK or European universities, where predicted grades drive offers, that timing matters a lot.

And a third: the skills transfer. The IA is the closest thing school offers to real university work — defining your own question, managing a project over months, writing to a criteria sheet. Students who learn to do this well in DP1 find the Extended Essay far less scary.

How to score well on any IA

Across every subject, high-scoring IAs share the same five habits. Here they are, in the order that matters.

1. Pick a focused topic you actually care about. The single biggest predictor of a painful IA is a vague or borrowed topic. "The economics of football" is a swamp; "How did the 2026 broadcast deal affect ticket pricing at one club?" is an IA. If you're stuck, our free IB IA Topic Generator on the Educifly site produces starting points by subject, and our guide on how to write an IB internal assessment covers topic selection step by step.

2. Print the criteria and mark yourself. Every subject guide publishes the exact criteria with descriptors for each mark band. Before submitting anything, score your own draft against them, line by line. It feels mechanical. It works.

3. Start earlier than feels necessary. The students who score 7s are rarely the smartest in the room — they're the ones who had time for a second look. Data collection fails. Experiments need re-runs. Sources turn out to be dead ends. Early starters absorb these setbacks; late starters can't.

4. Use your one draft wisely. Don't hand your teacher a half-finished sketch and burn your only formal feedback round on problems you could have caught yourself. Submit the best complete version you can, then treat their comments like gold.

5. Respect the format details. Word counts, required sections, citation style, appendices rules. Moderators notice sloppiness instantly, and several criteria across subjects award marks for communication and structure alone.

Common IA mistakes to avoid

The same handful of mistakes sink IAs every year, and all of them are avoidable. Here's the shortlist we see most often as tutors:

• Choosing a topic that's too broad. The number one issue in every subject. Narrow beats impressive, every time.

• Ignoring the criteria until the end. Writing 3,000 words first and checking the mark scheme after is doing it backwards.

• Going over the word count. Examiners stop reading. Full stop.

• Treating the reflection sections as filler. History's reflection and the sciences' evaluation carry real marks. Rushed final sections are the cheapest marks lost in the whole IB.

• Leaving data collection too late. You can't analyse data you never collected, and DP2 offers no spare weekends for re-running an experiment.

• Copying a "model IA" structure that doesn't fit your question. Moderators read hundreds of these. Templates show.

• Assuming the IA can be fixed later. Once your school's final deadline passes, that mark is locked. There is no resit for an IA within your exam session.

The IA, the EE, and TOK: how they fit together

The IA is subject coursework; the Extended Essay and TOK are separate core components — but they train the same muscles. Families often meet all three acronyms at once, so here's the map.

Every subject you take has an IA baked into its grade out of 7. On top of your six subjects, the IB core adds the Extended Essay (a 4,000-word independent research paper) and Theory of Knowledge (an essay and exhibition), which together contribute up to 3 extra points toward the 45-point diploma. CAS, the third core element, is completed but not graded.

The practical connection: a student who has done a rigorous IA — framed a question, handled sources or data, written to criteria — has already rehearsed the Extended Essay. Many students even grow their EE out of an interest sparked by an IA topic (in a permitted way; the two must be distinct pieces of work). If you plan the diploma smartly, the IA season of DP1 becomes training for the EE season that follows.

How parents can actually help

Parents can't write the IA, but they can remove the two conditions that ruin them: time pressure and topic paralysis. Here's what genuinely helps.

Ask about the school's IA calendar early in DP1 — most schools publish one. Put the draft deadlines on the family calendar the way you would exam dates, because a draft deadline missed in November quietly becomes a crisis in February.

When your child is choosing topics, be a sounding board, not a supervisor. The question "can you explain it to me in one sentence?" is surprisingly powerful. If they can't, the topic is probably too broad — and it's better to discover that in week one than in draft one.

And if a subject is wobbling — the Math exploration is stalled, the lab report doesn't match the criteria — get subject-specific help early rather than waiting for the final mark. A free trial class with one of Educifly's IB specialists is a low-stakes way to find out whether targeted coaching would help, months before it becomes urgent.

Frequently asked questions

What does IA stand for in IB?

IA stands for internal assessment. It's the compulsory coursework component that every IB Diploma subject includes — "internal" because your own teacher marks it first, before the IB moderates the marking. Each subject has its own IA format: a written exploration in Math, a scientific investigation in the sciences, an oral in languages, and so on.

How much is the IA worth in each subject?

Most IAs are worth 20% to 30% of the final subject grade. Math and the sciences sit at 20% for both SL and HL. History is 25% at SL and 20% at HL. Economics, Business Management, and English A are worth 30% at SL and 20% at HL. Language B orals count 25% at both levels. Arts subjects weight coursework even more heavily.

Who marks the IA — my teacher or the IB?

Both, in sequence. Your teacher marks your IA against the official IB criteria. The school then sends the marks plus a sample of student work to the IB, and a moderator re-marks the sample. If the teacher's marking was in line with the global standard, marks stand; if not, the IB adjusts the whole class's marks up or down.

Can moderation change my IA mark?

Yes. If the IB's moderator finds your school marked too generously, marks for the class are scaled down; if the school marked harshly, they can be scaled up. You never see this process directly — you just receive your final grade — but it's why good teachers mark strictly to the criteria rather than generously.

When do IB students do their IAs?

Mostly between the middle of the first DP year and the middle of the second. Schools set their own internal deadlines, but a common pattern is: topics and early drafts in DP1's second term, full drafts early in DP2, and final submissions between January and March of DP2 for May-session students.

How long should an IA be?

It depends on the subject, and the limits are strict. The sciences cap the report at 3,000 words. History allows 2,200 words. Geography allows 2,500. Economics commentaries are 800 words each. Business Management is 1,800 words. The Math exploration has no word limit but typically runs 12–20 pages. Work past the limit earns no credit, so treat the cap as a design constraint.

Can I fail the IB because of a bad IA?

A weak IA alone rarely fails anyone, but it drags the subject grade down hard. Because the IA is 20–30% of the grade, a very low IA mark means you need a much stronger exam performance to reach the same grade. There's one true failure route: not submitting an IA at all, which means no grade can be awarded for that subject — and no subject grade means no diploma.

Can my teacher or a tutor help me with my IA?

Yes, within IB rules. Teachers can teach the skills, discuss your topic, and give formal feedback on one complete draft. A tutor can do the same kind of coaching — criteria, structure, method — but nobody is allowed to write or edit the work for you. Submitting work that isn't your own counts as malpractice, and the IB can withhold the diploma for it.

Do universities see my IA?

Not directly — universities see your grades, not the coursework behind them. But the IA still influences admissions in two ways. It feeds the subject grades on your transcript, and it gives your teachers hard evidence for predicted grades, which drive offers in the UK and much of Europe. A strong IA at prediction time is quietly one of the most useful things a DP2 student can have.

What happens if I go over the word limit?

Examiners and moderators stop reading at the word limit, so anything beyond it simply earns no marks. If your conclusion sits past the cap, it's as if you never wrote one — and several subjects award specific marks for conclusions and evaluations. Always leave margin under the limit rather than pushing against it.

Is the IA the same as the Extended Essay?

No. The IA is coursework inside each subject, marked by your teacher and moderated by the IB, worth 20–30% of that subject's grade. The Extended Essay is a separate 4,000-word research paper in the IB core, supervised in school but marked externally, contributing (with TOK) up to 3 bonus points. Every student does six IAs and one EE.

Can I redo my IA if I get a bad mark?

Before your school's final deadline, you can keep improving your work — that's the point of starting early. After the school submits marks to the IB for your exam session, the IA is locked; there's no separate IA resit. A student retaking the whole subject in a later session may be able to carry forward or redo coursework, but that's a full retake decision, not a quick fix.

Written by the IB specialist team at Educifly — 1-on-1 online IB tutors since 2018. If your child is starting their IAs and you'd like subject-specific guidance, book a free trial class and we'll match you with a specialist in that exact subject.