National Benchmark Test

• Your school’s calendar for sporting and social events, holidays and exams
• Closing dates and application deadlines at all institutions where you intend to apply
• The language of instruction where you are applying

All this needs to be taken into consideration when you are deciding when the best time is to write your NBTs.

Registration for the NBTs is done online and takes about 5 minutes. NBT registration for the 2020 intake opens on 1st April 2019. Follow this link to book your test.

Note: you will need your official South African ID or foreign passport in order to complete the registration process.

To register you need to go to the NBT website. Watch the video below for a helpful walk-through.

• AQL only R110.
• AQL and MAT R220.
• Re-mark R250

Why do I have to register? The NBT project and the local venues guarantee space and materials ONLY for students who have registered to write at a specific venue or online on a specific day.

The test dates are provided by the National Benchmark Test project and are available on their website. These dates have been released and you can find them here.

NBT registration for the 2021 intake opens on 1st April 2021. All test dates for the 2021 intake cycle (05 June - 02 October) will be available to book from 1st April. The tests will run on the weekend, every week or every second week from 05 June 2021- 02 October 2021.

NBT stands for National Benchmark Test. This is an examination set up by the National Benchmark Test Project. The NBT is a set of tests used to assess a learner’s academic literacy, general knowledge, and mathematical skill in an effort to measure academic readiness for university.

The NBT tests were implemented in 2008 and are managed by the Alternative Admissions Research Project at the University of Cape Town. NBT results are used by many universities as an extra admission criterion for applicants to their institutions. They serve to complement and support, rather than replace or duplicate NSC results.

Dr Abbey Mathekga, the head of the higher education enrolment programme, said: “They [the NBTs] are intended to identify learners who might have problems in certain subjects. They are also aimed at determining the level of competency of learners in certain learning areas.” The NBT consists of two tests: the MAT and the AQL. The AQL (Academic Quantitative Literacy) is one multiple-choice test of three hours of writing time. The MAT (Core Maths) is also a multiple-choice test with three hours of writing time. Both papers are written on the same day.

The NBTs are available in English and Afrikaans. When you register you will be asked to indicate the language in which you wish to write. Note that you can only use one language i.e there is no option to write one test in English and the other in Afrikaans.

Each university and department will have different requirements for when you need to write your NBT test. Some might be as early as June or July. This is one of the reasons why the NBT is so confusing! Our top piece of advice is to choose a date that fits in with your application requirements AND is at a time when you can give it the attention it deserves (i.e. make sure to check your school calendar to ensure you don’t have other important school events in that week).

Available data by the NBT suggests that learners who write the tests later in the year have no advantage over those writing in earlier sessions. The test changes as the year progresses in order to maintain the validity of the test. From Advantage Learn’s experience and certainly our NBT expert and teacher, Mrs Pike, we recommend that learners should write this test as early as possible in the year and definitely before trials. The earlier a learner writes, the less content they have to learn for the test. Up until the end of June, the content tested is predominantly Grade 11 work and the first term of Grade 12 (Sequences and Grade 12 Trig). This makes the July holidays (4 term schools) ideal to give yourself enough time to prepare properly. Those applying for Medical and Health Science degrees have until the end of the first week in July to write their NBTs. If you are wanting to come to one of our preparation courses, then you should try to write your NBT test about a week later. Time must be given to working through the workbook and AQL modules before writing the NBT test.

NBT results are valid for three intake years. This means that it is worthwhile writing your NBT in your Matric year even if you are having a gap year. Your syllabus will never be fresher in your mind as it is now.

If you cannot write the NBTs in the year before your studies (if, for example, you are overseas), you are allowed to write them in January before the start of the academic year. Bear in mind, however, that you do expose yourself to special risks and practical implications in terms of placement and selection if you write the tests at such a late stage. It is therefore strongly recommended that you write the NBTs in your Matric year.

To access your NBT results you need to login to your profile on your NBT page. NBT results are only available four weeks after you have written your test. Click this link to go to the NBT results request page.

Do I have to send my results to the universities I am applying to?

The universities request your results from the NBT you do not send them to the university. The NBT charges the University to release the results to them and the 1 test will apply to all universities that require it.

Didn't get the results that you wanted?

We offer a few online courses that will help increase your results. Our NBT Preparation Online Course will help you improve your MAT and AQL results.

Which institutions will use my NBT results and how do they get them? All the universities to which you apply can receive your NBT results. Many South African universities use the NBTs in conjunction with the National Senior Certificate (NSC) for access to their programmes. The NBTs help to interpret your NSC results and can be used by universities in different ways.

• Some use them to help make decisions about your access/application to university. This means that your NBT results, in combination with your matric results, are used to determine whether you are ready for academic study.
• Some universities use the results for placement within the institution. This means that your NBT results are used to decide whether you will need extra academic support after you have been accepted to university.
• Some institutions use them to develop curricula within their university.

When you apply to an institution, they will place your name on their applicant list. As applications are processed, they send the NBT Project a request for scores that match the applicants on the list. Universities will only get your results when they request them.

Before you submit your registration to write the NBT, you are asked to check a box giving permission for your results to be sent to the requesting institutions and for your results to be used in research projects. Be sure to read this and check this box before hitting “submit”. Remember, it is your responsibility to check whether your NBT results have been loaded with your tertiary institution.

Some universities do allow their applicants to write the NBT more than once in an attempt to achieve a better result the second time around. However you need to check with the specific faculty and tertiary institution that you are applying to, to make sure that this is the case as not every university will accept the second result.

Note If you do choose to write a second time, you should give yourself at least 6 weeks between writing sessions.If you write the MAT test a second time, you must also write the AQL test a second time on the same morning.

Advantage Learn offers NBT Preparation courses in the form of workshops (book here) and online (book here).

Our course is recommended for all learners wanting to prepare and do well in their NBT test. With many years of experience in preparing learners for the NBT test coupled with a world-class online learning environment and exceptional educators, we are well placed to give you peace of mind with this challenging test.

Since formally commencing NBT training in 2013, Advantage Learn has helped thousands of learners across South Africa to prepare for this test. Our carefully designed courses prepare learners for both papers of the National Benchmark Test (NBT) - the MAT and AQL. It is important that you do this course at the appropriate time for your NBT.

Our course includes the following: training of essential sections known to be tested regularly in the NBTs, test day best practices, how to go about answering multiple-choice questions, extensive practice examples and a full mock exam.

NBT Online course

Made up of just over 20+ hours of tutorial videos led by our Maths and English experts, the course focuses on covering key concepts tested in the NBT as well as test day best practices. Learners have full access to the material from the purchase date for 12 months. Learners are able to work at their own pace, at any time of the day, in accordance with their NBT test date.

There are teaching videos, practise questions, quizzes, downloadable notes, a mock NBT past paper for the MAT & QL and comments for asking questions directly to the teacher and other learners.

The more you engage with the material you are watching the better you will do. Press pause, watch again, try the examples on your own and learn at your own pace. You can access the online courses at any time of the day or night - that is the beauty of online learning!

Click for our Full Online course or just our AQL course.

NBT Workshops

Our NBT Workshops are a 9 - hour course where the teacher covers predominantly material tested in the MAT. Our learners will be referred to the Academic and Quantitive Literacy components in our online course for study.

The NBT Workshops are run on the weekend (and some public holidays). Some Workshops are full-day courses (9 hours) and others are split over Saturday and Sunday mornings (4.5 hours each). This was carefully thought out in an effort to accommodate sporting commitments as well as those learners who battle to concentrate for long stretches at a time.

Our NBT Workshops can be booked as live-online workshops where learners are able to attend lessons via live-stream. Alternatively, lessons can be attended in-person in a venue near you! We have workshops covering all major metros in South Africa. Click here to find our more about our NBT workshops.

• Email: nbt@uct.ac.za
• Telephone: 021 650 3523
• Website: www.nbt.ac.za

University info

Unlike the US and the UK and many other countries that model their education system around standardised assessments (eg. SATs, ACTs etc) our South African school system more commonly uses summative, continuous and formative styles of assessment (for an explanation of these styles read more here). The NBTs are a standardised assessment and thus this form of assessment is not common for many  South African learners.

So how does this form of standardised assessment differ from the usual forms of assessment employed?

Here are some examples:

• They are multiple-choice based. This is unfamiliar answering territory for many learners and so needs practice before-hand in order to build confidence.
• The questions are formed around right AND wrong answers and not just the correct answers like we are used to. In other words, you will be faced with a situation where you think to yourself, but BOTH A AND B could be right. This can be really scary. At a high school level, we are groomed to try to get the CORRECT answer hence questions are formed to lead learners to the correct answer.
• There are no marks for working and hence the questions are formed to test absolute accuracy. This makes it critical to work efficiently and accurately!
• The order of difficulty does not build through the assessment. The hardest question might be the first question and this often throws learners off from the get-go.
• A one-time assessment! Most learners write this assessment once and the results are used for university applications. At school, we are used to building our results through many different methods.eg. continuous assessment, outcomes-based projects and portfolios of evidence etc.
• You can’t use a calculator
• You don’t know ahead of time what is going to be tested - in school you know at least what part of the syllabus is going to be tested.

We could go on for ages but I think you get the message, it is very different to what you are used to!

Writers are reminded that the test is undertaken in a secure proctored online environment. You will be monitored throughout the test to ensure that you follow all testing procedures. Your entire test session will be recorded. You may only have a piece of paper and a pen/pencil in the test room. Books, cell phones, smartwatches, calculators, and any other items are strictly prohibited. Please ensure that you comply with all test requirements to avoid the invalidation of your test.

Instructions will be provided on screen.

• Online Test sessions start times will be communicated to you for each session. For most test dates the morning sessions start at 09h00 and afternoon sessions start at 14h00. Please login 30 minutes prior to the start time to allow for the Lockdown Browser Download.
• Each test has a duration of 3 hours. Please ensure that laptops, computers, routers, mobile hotspots etc. remain connected to mains power/chargers to avoid battery failure during the tests. Should your device shut down you will be exited from the session.
• You will require approximately 500mb to complete each test including the Lockdown Browser download. Please ensure that you have sufficient data available.
• You should take your test in a quiet room with a blank wall behind you, with good lighting.
• The Laptop or Computer camera must be operational and facing your face at all times during the test, otherwise, your session may be invalidated. There is a photo panel visible to you during your test so that you can check your camera is functional and your face visible.
• Your face must be visible so no hoodies or clothing that completely obscures the face are allowed.
• You may not wear headphones during the test session.
• Any other person entering the room, or movement in the room will be picked up by the camera and will invalidate your test session.
• You may only have a piece of paper and pen/pencil in the test room. Books, cell phones, smartwatches, calculators and any other items are strictly prohibited. These items will be picked up by the system and will invalidate your test session.
• Bathroom breaks are permitted but must be less than 5 minutes in duration. Please ensure that you do not exit the test or the lockdown browser and ensure that your laptop or computer does not enter “sleep” or “screen/power saver” mode while you are away as this may affect your session.
• You may have a bottle of water (or another liquid refreshment) with you during the test.

Due to the COVID- 19 pandemic, the NBTs are unable to offer national sessions during lockdown level 2. This is because of the uncertainty around when the lockdown will ease and when venues will become available. The NBT national sessions will only resume and be limited to certain venues once lockdown level 1 is reached. At this point, the National Benchmark Test Project cannot give any confirmed dates for in person sessions and strongly encourage learners to write the Online NBT.

Learners will need an appropriate device to write their test online as well as access to data or wifi. Find out more about the NBT online test here.

• The Academic Literacy (AL) sections will require reading of various texts with multiple choice questions referring to the text. Some questions are general knowledge-based. Questions on grammar, punctuation, vocabulary are included. It predominantly assesses the ability to understand the meaning and application of various texts as well as understanding and applying the argument or main point of the author.
• The Quantitative Literacy (QL) sections assess a student’s capacity to: understand basic numerical concepts, read and interpret graphs, reason logically and identify patterns and trends. It is largely based on the Grade 11 Maths Literacy syllabus.

The MAT paper is a separate three hour paper (only written by learners applying for certain degree programmes and who have done Core Maths at school) and assesses mostly Grade 11 Core Maths syllabus content although some Grade 12 work is included, depending on the time of year the assessment is written. It also takes a multiple-choice format. It tests proficiency in such areas as problem solving and modeling, functions, trigonometry, spatial perception, and probability.

Both the AQL and MAT are differentiated into cognitive levels, meaning there is a range in difficulty in each section – with the easier applications generally coming first.

It is important to attend an NBT workshop in your Grade 12 year. It does not matter when you attend an NBT workshop. The important thing is to make sure you utilise the online course in the 2 weeks leading up to the NBTs to make sure the content is fresh for when you write the test.

If you are a post Matric learner needing to sit the NBT then we highly recommend you re-study your Grade 11 Mathematics before attending a workshop. You can do so through our Maths Online Grade 11 Path.