How we analyse IB past papers

Which papers we count

We include every paper from every exam session in the period, May and November, for each course. For the Maths courses that means 2021 to 2025. For Physics and Chemistry, which changed in 2025, we count only papers from the new course, so the old syllabus does not distort the picture.

Counts as of October 2026. They grow each session as new papers are added.

How a question is tagged

Each question is read by a teacher and given one or more topic tags. A question that asks you to differentiate a function and then find an area gets both "Differentiation" and "Integration". Long questions often move through several topics, so they often carry more than one tag.

How marks are weighted

We count marks, not just questions, because a 2-mark warm-up and a 16-mark Section B question are not equal. When a question carries more than one tag, its marks are split equally between them: a 12-mark question tagged with two topics adds 6 marks to each. No mark is counted twice, so the topic percentages add up to 100%.

What we report

• Each topic's share of all marks, overall and by paper (Paper 1, 2 and, at HL, 3).
• How that share changes from session to session.
• Which topics tend to appear together in the same question.
• Average marks per question, which shows the topics that tend to become long questions.

Limits

Tagging involves judgement, and two teachers can tag a mixed question differently. Past frequency does not guarantee what a future paper will contain; it tells you where the marks have gone so far. We never reproduce IB questions: the analysis describes them by topic and marks only.

Questions or corrections: info@ibtuition.sg. Written by Ejaz Ahmad.