Does your weekly football session count as CAS? Do you need 150 hours? And what should a reflection say beyond describing what you did?
These questions are easier to answer when you separate participation, planning and evidence. An activity can be worthwhile without meeting every CAS requirement. A thoughtful reflection can explain learning, but it cannot replace involvement that never happened.
This guide brings together the requirements, project ideas and reflection advice you need to plan CAS alongside the rest of your IB Diploma Programme.
What Is CAS in the IB Diploma?
CAS stands for creativity, activity and service. It is a compulsory part of the DP core, alongside the Extended Essay and Theory of Knowledge. CAS does not add points to your diploma score, but completing it is necessary to receive the diploma, as the IB’s assessment guidance confirms.
The IB’s CAS overview explains the three strands:
Creativity involves artistic work and creative thinking. Developing a performance, publication or visual project can provide opportunities to explore this strand.
Activity involves physical exertion that supports a healthy lifestyle. It is not limited to competitive sport.
Service involves unpaid, voluntary engagement that benefits a community and provides learning. Respect for the people involved, including their dignity and autonomy, is essential.
A CAS programme should give you opportunities to contribute, develop skills and examine your decisions outside academic assessment.
How Many CAS Hours Do You Need?
The IB does not set a universal CAS requirement of 150 hours. Clastify’s explanation of CAS hours distinguishes the former hours target from the current approach and notes that individual schools may still use time logs or local targets.
The IB CAS guide requires regular engagement over at least 18 months, with a reasonable balance across the three strands.
Ask your coordinator how your school records participation. Follow those instructions, but do not treat an hours total as proof that you have completed CAS. Sustained involvement and evidence of learning still matter.
This also means that a busy holiday cannot replace the whole programme.
What Counts as CAS, and What Might Be Rejected?
The IB’s guidance on CAS experiences and projects emphasises purposeful involvement, personal challenge, planning and reflection. It does not prescribe one approved list of activities.
Before committing, explain what you intend to do, your role, the strand it addresses and the opportunity for learning. For service, establish a genuine community need rather than deciding what people need without consulting them.
Two boundaries are particularly important. Work submitted to meet a DP course requirement cannot also count as CAS, according to the IB CAS guide. Paid work cannot be presented as voluntary service, under the IB’s service definition.
Other proposals need discussion rather than a blanket verdict. An existing hobby may offer substantial growth; a newly joined club may offer little involvement. Ask what you will contribute, practise or take responsibility for.
As a practical check, review proposals with unclear personal involvement, no identifiable service need or unresolved safety arrangements before starting. These are questions to resolve with your coordinator, not problems to conceal in the reflection later.
The Seven CAS Learning Outcomes in Plain English
You must demonstrate each outcome at least once across your programme, not all seven in every experience. The following paraphrases the IB’s published learning outcomes.
1. Understand your abilities. Recognise what you do well and where further development is needed.
2. Stretch yourself and build skills. Take on something unfamiliar or more demanding, and identify the ability you develop through it.
3. Move an idea into action. Explain your contribution to initiating an experience and organising how it will happen.
4. Sustain your involvement. Show active participation over time and how you respond when continuing becomes difficult.
5. Learn to collaborate. Contribute to shared work and examine both the advantages and difficulties of working with others.
6. Respond to a wider issue. Understand an issue with global relevance and take responsible action. That action can happen locally; an overseas trip is not required.
7. Examine your decisions ethically. Consider whom your choices affect and the consequences of what you do.
Use these outcomes to review your learning honestly, not to attach impressive labels to unrelated activities.
A CAS Experience Is Not Necessarily a CAS Project
A CAS experience can be one event or an ongoing series. A CAS project is a collaborative sequence of experiences lasting at least one month. You must undertake at least one project, as explained in the IB CAS guide.
Duration alone is insufficient. Continuing a solo activity for a month does not automatically make it the required collaborative project.
A project can address one, two or all three strands. The IB’s project guidance does not require every project to combine creativity, activity and service.
When proposing yours, identify the shared purpose, participants, responsibilities and timeline. Make your own contribution clear without presenting the team’s entire output as your individual achievement.
CAS Ideas to Discuss With Your Coordinator
The following shortlist draws on Lanterna’s CAS idea bank. These are starting points, not automatic approvals.
Creativity ideas: contribute to a school magazine, develop photography skills, make a documentary or prepare challenging music for a performance. Choose a clear creative goal rather than simply recording attendance.
Activity ideas: follow a running programme, join a team sport, learn dance or develop cycling skills. Discuss suitable goals and safety arrangements before increasing the challenge.
Service ideas: volunteer with a library, support an animal shelter, participate in conservation work or help organise a clothing collection requested by a community organisation. Clarify the actual need and your responsibilities with the partner involved.
For the required project, think about shared work sustained over time. The IB CAS guide’s published examples include a group mural, organising and participating in a sports team, and establishing tutoring for people who need support.
Before choosing, ask a practical question: can the group follow through on this commitment with the time, permissions and resources available? A manageable proposal gives you something concrete to discuss with your coordinator.
Plan Before You Promise
The IB CAS guide identifies five stages: investigation, preparation, action, reflection and demonstration. Use them to investigate the purpose, prepare responsibly, act, examine your learning and share what happened.
RevisionDojo’s CAS guide recommends setting intentions, collecting evidence and building CAS into your existing schedule. Turn that advice into a short proposal before approaching potential collaborators.
Write down the purpose, your intended contribution, the people involved and the steps required. Include a realistic timeline and note which decisions need school approval.
For service, ask the partner what would actually be useful and how you should communicate. Do not promise an ongoing programme until you know who can sustain it.
Build in a review point. Decide when the group will examine progress, discuss difficulties and adjust the plan. Keep earlier versions so you can explain why your approach changed.
How to Write CAS Reflections That Show Learning
A diary entry records events. A reflection examines their significance: what influenced your decision, how you felt, what you discovered and what you will do differently.
As Lanterna’s reflection guide puts it:
“Purposeful reflection is about quality, not quantity.”
Start with a specific moment rather than summarising an entire term. Choose a decision, disagreement, unexpected difficulty or change in your understanding. Explain your response and examine what supports your interpretation.
The following is a reflection scaffold, not a real student account or an IB exemplar. Replace the brackets with your own experience:
During [specific moment], I noticed [problem, reaction or unexpected result]. I chose to [action] because [reason]. I felt [emotion], which influenced [decision or response]. Looking at [actual feedback, observation or work produced], I realised [specific learning]. Next time, I will [change] because [reason]. I still need to understand [question].
Do not fill every gap mechanically. Use the prompts that help you examine something significant.
For collaboration, discuss a genuine difference in expectations and your part in resolving it. For ethics, examine the consequences of a choice. For perseverance, explain how you adapted when the original approach became difficult. These are prompts for analysing your experience, not events to invent.
An honest account of something that remained unresolved can reveal more than a polished claim that everything went perfectly.
Keep Evidence and Reflection Connected
The IB requires a CAS portfolio, plus three formal interviews with your coordinator or adviser. The portfolio contains evidence and reflections; it is not formally assessed.
A photograph can show participation. It does not, by itself, explain what you learned. A reflection can describe progress, but it is stronger when the reader can understand what prompted that conclusion.
Keep relevant plans, drafts, feedback, records of participation and finished work together. Label each item with its date, context and your contribution. Obtain appropriate permission before including identifiable photographs or personal information about others.
Lanterna’s guidance also explains that reflection can take different forms, including recordings, conversations and visual work. It need not become an essay after every session. Follow your school’s instructions about acceptable formats and documentation.
A brief note soon after an experience can preserve the details you may later choose to examine. Keep factual records as you go rather than reconstructing a term from memory.
Fit CAS Into Your Wider DP Plan
Put CAS commitments beside your IA, Extended Essay and subject deadlines. Before accepting another responsibility, check what you have already promised and when it needs attention.
Use The IB Survival Blueprint to plan these responsibilities together. For subject learning and exam practice alongside that plan, explore Koncepts for DP students.
Choose experiences you can participate in meaningfully, review your learning while it is fresh and ask your coordinator about uncertainty early. Your portfolio should make your contribution understandable without exaggerating it.
