How did we build the past papers?
From the official exam papers to questions you can find by topic.
PointsGame
An exam paper is built to be sat, not studied from. To practise one topic you’d have to dig through years of papers, then find the right page of the right marking scheme for each question.
So we took the papers apart. Every question is on its own, beside its marking scheme, and you can find it by topic and year. Here’s how, and what to keep in mind.
Step 1
We started from the official papers
Every question comes from the State Examinations Commission’s own exam papers, with its own marking schemes. Nothing is retyped or reworded. Today that’s 5,800 Higher Level questions across 15 subjects, going back as far as 2001.
Step 2
We cut every paper into questions
Each paper is cut into questions, and each question is paired with the part of the marking scheme that marks it. A few rules decide where the cuts go:
- Parts that depend on each other stay together.
- Parts that move to a different topic are split.
- Anything a part needs, such as a passage, a diagram or a table, comes with it, even if the paper printed it once for several parts.
The test for every cut: can you answer this without seeing another one?
Step 3
We checked the sciences and Business against the new course
Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Business have new specifications. We read their old questions against the new ones: questions that are off the new course were taken out, and questions that are partly off it were trimmed to the parts that are on it, marking scheme included.
So an older question can be shorter here than on the printed paper. That’s on purpose: you only practise what you can be asked.
Step 4
We tagged every question by topic
Each question is tagged with the topics you need to answer it, from a fixed list for its subject. A question that uses two topics has both, so it turns up under either.
Step 5
We made the words searchable
The text of every question was read from its image by software, so you can search for a word or phrase. It reads plain words well, but maths symbols and part labels can come out wrong, so a search for an equation may miss a question. Topics and years are the surer way to find one.
Step 6
We added worked solutions
The marking scheme tells you what earns marks. It doesn’t always show how to get there. So Maths, Applied Maths, Physics and Chemistry questions have worked solutions too: 1,663 so far, each written from the question and its marking scheme. In Physics and Chemistry they cover the parts with calculations.
What to keep in mind
- A few official marking schemes leave a question out. We don’t write our own in its place.
- Worked solutions are ours, not the State Examinations Commission’s. The marking scheme is the official word.
- If you spot something wrong, tell us and we’ll fix it.