IB Literature and Performance SL grade boundaries: what you need for a 7

In May 2025 TZ3 a 7 needed 91% on Internal assessment and 77% on Paper 1. The component with the lower threshold is the one candidates found hard, and it is usually the one where a few marks are cheapest to gain.

Marked work (internal assessment, orals, written tasks) is assessed against criteria known in advance, so it is the part of the grade under the student’s control before the exam. Which written paper has the lowest threshold changes from session to session, so a past paper should be marked against the boundaries of its own session, not against the latest one.

In May the IB sets different papers for different parts of the world, and each gets its own boundaries. In May 2025 the 7 started at 83% in TZ3 and at 83% in TZ2.

A gap between timezones is not an advantage for one of them: the boundary follows the paper. The useful reading is the range across all timezones and sessions, which is what the first table shows.

In Literature and Performance SL the 6 sits on average 12.9 marks below the 7 on the 100-mark scale. That is roughly one question answered fully instead of half-answered, or the marks lost to misread instructions across a whole paper.

Use the range, not the last session. A student scoring 86% or more on full mocks under exam conditions has a 7 in every session on record. A student at 78% has a 7 only on the hardest paper, and should plan for the 6 to 7 gap rather than assume it.

All 8 sessions were read from the grade boundaries document the IB issues to Diploma Programme coordinators after each session (one document per session; 2021 and 2022 have an examination-route and a non-examination-route document). The full dataset for every IB subject is on the grade boundaries overview, as CSV and JSON.

Independent work, not endorsed by the International Baccalaureate. Last checked 4 November 2026. Corrections: pietro@pietromeloni.com.