Does CAS affect my final IB score?

CAS does not add points to your final IB total, which is calculated from six subjects plus up to three points from TOK and the Extended Essay. It is therefore impossible to raise a 34 to a 35 by performing especially well in CAS. However, CAS is a compulsory Diploma Programme core requirement, so its completion affects whether the diploma can be awarded. A student may have enough academic points and still miss the diploma if CAS remains incomplete. CAS is therefore ungraded but not optional.

Can you fail CAS in the IB Diploma?

A student can fail to complete CAS, although the IB more accurately describes CAS as completed or not completed rather than assigning a conventional failing grade. Non-completion may result from insufficient evidence, failure to demonstrate all seven learning outcomes, lack of sustained engagement or failure to complete the required CAS project. Your coordinator should monitor your progress and identify problems before the final deadline. Respond promptly if the coordinator requests additional evidence, reflection or participation. If the school cannot confirm completion, the IB Diploma cannot be awarded.

How many CAS hours do I need to pass?

The current IB framework does not prescribe a universal minimum of 150 CAS hours. Instead, CAS must begin at the start of the Diploma Programme and continue regularly for at least 18 months. The programme should show a reasonable balance across creativity, activity and service, together with all seven learning outcomes. Your school may still use an hours log as a monitoring tool or establish a local participation expectation. Recording hours can show commitment, but accumulating a particular total does not by itself prove CAS completion.

How many CAS reflections do I need?

The IB does not prescribe one universal number of written reflections for every CAS student. Reflection should occur at meaningful points, such as during planning, after a challenge, when plans change or at the conclusion of an experience. Your school may require a particular number or schedule of entries, and those local instructions still apply to you. Quality matters because a reflection should reveal decisions, learning, growth and consideration of relevant outcomes. Ten superficial summaries are usually less useful than several timely, specific and honest reflections supported by evidence.

Does every CAS activity need to meet all seven learning outcomes?

No individual CAS experience has to demonstrate all seven learning outcomes. You must provide evidence that the seven outcomes have each been achieved at least once across your CAS programme as a whole. An ongoing team project might demonstrate planning, collaboration and perseverance, while a separate service experience might provide stronger evidence of ethics or global significance. Select only the outcomes that the experience genuinely supports. Claiming every outcome for every entry can make a portfolio look mechanical and may weaken the credibility of your evidence.

What happens during the final CAS interview?

The final CAS interview is a documented conversation in which you review your programme and explain how you achieved the seven learning outcomes. Your coordinator may ask about significant experiences, challenges, collaboration, ethical decisions and personal growth. You should be ready to direct the coordinator to specific portfolio evidence rather than offering only general statements. The interview is not an externally marked oral examination and does not receive a numerical score. Its purpose is to help confirm completion and allow you to evaluate the significance of your CAS programme.

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How Is CAS Marked in the IB Diploma? | RevisionDojo

How Is CAS Marked in the IB Diploma?

Last updated: 29 Jul 2026•13 min read

CAS is not marked with a numerical score or letter grade. It contributes no points to the IB Diploma, but successful completion is compulsory: if your CAS requirements are not completed, the IB Diploma cannot be awarded, regardless of your subject scores.

Instead of receiving marks, you must demonstrate sustained engagement in creativity, activity and service, complete at least one CAS project, and provide evidence that you have achieved all seven CAS learning outcomes. Your school evaluates this evidence through your CAS portfolio, reflections, documented interviews and participation record.

How is CAS marked by the IB?

The most accurate answer is that CAS is not formally assessed in the way an IB subject, Theory of Knowledge essay or Extended Essay is assessed. There is no examination, percentage, grade boundary, external examiner or standardized points scale for CAS.

Your result is effectively recorded as completed or not completed. Students often describe this as pass or fail, but the important official distinction is whether the school can confirm that the IB's CAS completion requirements have been met.

Feature	How CAS works
Numerical mark	None
Letter grade	None
Diploma points	0 points
External examination	None
Main basis for completion	Evidence of all seven learning outcomes and sustained CAS engagement
Decision recorded by	Your school, normally through the CAS coordinator
Consequence of non-completion	The IB Diploma is not awarded

This makes CAS different from TOK and the Extended Essay. TOK and the EE are graded and can jointly contribute up to three core points, whereas CAS contributes no points but remains a compulsory part of the Diploma Programme core. The distinction is explained further in RevisionDojo's overview of the IB core requirements and IB grading system.

Who decides whether you have completed CAS?

Your CAS coordinator or adviser, following your school's procedures, monitors your progress and determines whether there is sufficient evidence to confirm completion. The IB does not normally send an examiner to assign marks to individual CAS portfolios.

The coordinator's decision must still reflect IB requirements rather than personal preference. Schools may establish local deadlines, portfolio templates, approval processes or minimum numbers of check-ins, but these local procedures should help them verify the official requirements.

For example, a school might require monthly portfolio updates or use ManageBac. That can be a binding school rule, but it is not automatically a universal IB rule for every student worldwide. Always separate the following:

Official IB requirements, which apply across IB World Schools
School procedures, which explain how your coordinator will verify those requirements
Good practice, which is sensible advice but not necessarily compulsory

If your school asks for more documentation than another school, follow your own coordinator's instructions. The coordinator is responsible for confirming your completion and should warn you when the existing evidence is inadequate.

What must you demonstrate to complete CAS?

The official IB CAS subject brief states that CAS begins at the start of the Diploma Programme and continues regularly for at least 18 months. Your programme should include a reasonable balance across the three strands and a combination of experiences rather than a collection of disconnected entries completed at the last minute.

The strands are:

Creativity: exploring and extending ideas that lead to an original or interpretive product or performance
Activity: physical exertion contributing to a healthy lifestyle
Service: collaborative and reciprocal engagement with a community in response to an authentic need

You must also complete at least one CAS project. According to the IB's official CAS project guidance, this is a collaborative series of sequential CAS experiences lasting at least one month. It may address one, two or all three strands.

A project is therefore not simply a long individual activity. RevisionDojo's comparison of a CAS project and CAS experience can help you check the distinction before proposing an idea.

The seven CAS learning outcomes

Completion is based on demonstrating all seven learning outcomes at least once across your programme. One experience can support several outcomes, and the same outcome may appear in several experiences, but attaching an outcome label is not enough by itself.

CAS learning outcome	What convincing evidence might show
Identify strengths and develop areas for growth	An honest comparison of your starting ability, limitations and subsequent development
Undertake challenges and develop new skills	A genuine challenge, the strategies used and evidence of improvement
Initiate and plan a CAS experience	Goals, research, schedules, communication, risk consideration or allocation of roles
Show commitment and perseverance	Regular involvement and a reasoned response to difficulties or setbacks
Demonstrate collaborative skills and recognize their benefits	Shared decisions, communication, conflict management and reflection on teamwork
Engage with issues of global significance	Understanding a wider issue and taking responsible action locally, nationally or internationally
Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions	Consideration of consequences, consent, representation, fairness, safety or community dignity

The official IB CAS subject brief and learning-outcomes table is particularly useful because it gives the full descriptors. Use those descriptors when deciding what your evidence actually proves.

How your CAS portfolio is evaluated

Every CAS student is expected to maintain a CAS portfolio showing engagement, evidence and reflection. The portfolio itself is not awarded a mark, but it gives your coordinator the material needed to determine whether you have achieved the learning outcomes and completed a coherent programme.

Useful portfolio evidence can include:

Plans, goals and schedules
Photographs or short videos of participation
Drafts, designs or creative products
Correspondence with collaborators or community partners
Attendance records or supervisor confirmations
Records of decisions and changes to the plan
Reflections created before, during and after significant experiences

Evidence of attendance proves that you participated, but it does not automatically prove learning. A photograph from a beach clean-up, for example, confirms presence; a reflection explaining how the group investigated local waste, changed its approach and considered the ethics of photographing volunteers demonstrates much more.

Reflection can be written, spoken, visual or multimedia where your school permits it. Strong reflection explains decisions, challenges, consequences and growth rather than merely narrating events. The RevisionDojo CAS reflection guide offers practical ways to move from description to analysis.

CAS interviews and ongoing monitoring

Students normally have three formal documented CAS interviews with a CAS coordinator or adviser: one near the beginning, one toward the end of the first DP year and one near the end of the CAS programme. These are progress conversations, not oral examinations with a numerical mark.

In the interviews, you may be asked to explain:

Your interests, goals and proposed experiences
How your programme includes creativity, activity and service
Which learning outcomes you have demonstrated
What your portfolio evidence establishes
What difficulties you encountered and how you responded
How the programme affected your skills, values or perspective

Prepare by reviewing your portfolio and selecting specific examples. A student who can explain why an experience mattered will usually provide more convincing evidence than one who simply recites learning-outcome numbers.

Hours, reflection counts and other misconceptions

The current IB framework does not prescribe a universal 150-hour target. That figure relates to an older model of CAS, while the present framework emphasizes regular engagement over at least 18 months, achievement of the learning outcomes and quality of experience.

The IB also does not set one universal number of experiences or written reflections for every student. Your school may set its own documentation expectations, and you must follow them, but completing a large number of shallow entries does not compensate for missing outcomes or an incomplete CAS project. RevisionDojo's guide to the minimum CAS requirements can help you organize the official elements while checking local rules with your coordinator.

Other common misconceptions include:

Every activity must cover all seven outcomes: False. The programme as a whole must demonstrate all seven.
Every experience must include all three strands: False. An experience may involve one or more strands.
A supervisor signature alone guarantees completion: False. Verification helps, but your learning and engagement still need evidence.
CAS can be completed in a final-week rush: False. The required sustained engagement cannot be reconstructed retrospectively.
Paid employment automatically counts as service: False. Service is collaborative and reciprocal engagement responding to an authentic community need, not ordinary paid work.

A practical completion checklist

Review your portfolio at regular intervals rather than waiting for the final interview. A useful audit asks:

Have I participated regularly for at least 18 months?
Is there a reasonable balance of creativity, activity and service?
Have I completed a collaborative CAS project lasting at least one month?
Can I point to convincing evidence for every learning outcome?
Do my reflections explain learning rather than only events?
Have my three formal interviews been documented?
Have I met my school's deadlines and local portfolio rules?

Jojo AI can help you generate reflection prompts or identify places where an entry is too descriptive, but your final reflection must remain truthful and personal. Never invent participation, evidence, difficulties or community impact.

Conclusion

CAS is not marked through points, percentages or letter grades. Your school confirms whether you have completed it by reviewing sustained participation, balance across the strands, the required collaborative project, your portfolio, interviews and evidence for all seven learning outcomes.

The safest approach is to document meaningful experiences as they occur and check your progress with your coordinator. RevisionDojo's IB CAS resource collection, Study Notes and Jojo AI can support planning and reflection, while your coordinator remains the authority on your school's submission procedures.

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