The Framework

Information literacy, defined.

Information literacy is the ability to find, verify, judge, connect and responsibly apply information. These five competencies form the entire structure of the olympiad.

Students now grow up alongside recommendation feeds, group forwards and AI assistants that answer instantly and sound certain even when they are wrong. Schools teach subjects; almost none teach the discipline of deciding what to trust.

The framework below is deliberately practical. Each competency describes something a child actually does with information, and every olympiad question maps to one of them.

1. Find

Framing a searchable question and choosing where to look.

•Turning a vague curiosity into a precise, answerable question
•Choosing between a search engine, a primary document, an expert or a dataset
•Recognising when the first result is not the best result

2. Verify

Checking before believing, and before forwarding.

•Tracing a claim back to its original source
•Spotting fabricated quotes, misattributed images and invented citations
•Identifying when a confident answer has no evidence behind it at all

3. Judge

Weighing credibility, expertise, bias and motive.

•Distinguishing fact, opinion, inference and advertisement
•Asking who benefits from a claim being believed
•Reading statistics and charts that are technically true but misleading

4. Connect

Turning several partial sources into one coherent answer.

•Reconciling two credible sources that disagree
•Noticing what is missing from an otherwise convincing account
•Summarising honestly, including the uncertainty

5. Apply

Using information ethically to make and defend a decision.

•Attribution, plagiarism and honest use of AI assistance
•Privacy, consent and responsible sharing online
•Deciding — and being able to explain the reasoning behind the decision

Why It Matters Now

The cost of believing the wrong thing has never been lower to incur, or higher to carry.

A child who can verify a claim, recognise a motive and hold two conflicting sources in mind at once is protected in a way no content filter can provide. That protection is a skill — and like every skill, it improves when it is practised and recognised.