The Internal Assessment will determine 20% of the grade for all schools, unchanged from non-pandemic years.

Schools should mark and internally moderate as usual. But instead of being sampled and externally moderated, all investigations must be uploaded to IBIS eCoursework by 20th April with an additional sheet per candidate containing your criteria marks (out of 2, 6, 6, 6 and 4) and an overall comment. Each IA will then be examined as though from scratch (but we imagine the examiner might glance through the criteria marks and comments already suggested).

If you've already annotated your students' work, there's no need to try to remove the annotations - just ensure that the examiner will be able to see what the student has written.

Most IB World Schools will host exams in May 2021. This is not a choice for the individual school to make - it is determined by the IB - but the exam decision could be withdrawn at short notice if local restrictions or virus transmission rates would make it impossible. Individual candidates cannot opt-out either; indeed, the IB provides guidance on how a student could be remotely invigilated at home or in hospital if necessary!

For exam-route schools, the exams (on 3rd May) will combine to form the remaining 80% of the grade:

• Paper 1 30%
• Paper 2 50%
• Paper 3 removed

As in other years, schools will submit predicted grades for all students in all subjects by 20th April. These predicted grades should reflect what grade the student is (or would have been) most likely to achieve when the exams and IA are taken into account. The IB published Grade descriptors in 2017 that might support schools in making predictions with reduced in-house exams or test evidence.

But this year, predicted grades are more important than usual. For non-exam schools, the predicted grade will contribute the 80% weighting not provided by exams. And any given exam school could become a non-exam school before 3rd May! So the IB has produced a distribution within which the predicted grades must fit.

The distribution is based on actual results achieved (not accuracy of predictions) in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The IB suggest that the distribution is generous at the top end, always rounding up the number of students who are allocated a 7 and 5 (although not 6 and 4). However, many schools have reported that the number of low grades required as part of the distribution seems disproportionately high; it seems a lone 2 or 3 (for example) in the years 2017-2019 could have a big impact in 2021.

Teachers with five or fewer students in SL Chemistry and/or HL Chemistry will notice that IBIS presents the distribution as a full suite of 7s. But in reality this just means you don't have an allotted distribution; you can enter what grades you feel are justified at or below 7. The same is true for A grades in the Extended Essay.

If you have concerns about your distribution, talk to your Diploma Coordinator. They will have an understanding of the bigger picture for your school and might be willing to submit an application for an amended distribution through the Exceptions process. There are two Exceptions justifications:

1. Exceptional candidates (where one or two grades might be changed upwards)
2. Exceptional historical data (where one year out of 2017-19 is deemed to be atypical and replaced by the grades awarded in a previous year)

Some anecdotal evidence suggests that the Exceptions applications already submitted have been most successful when they are concise and when an amended distribution is proposed. The IB will ask for further evidence if they require it.