The International Baccalaureate (IB) has recently announced changes to the paper patterns and portions for the upcoming 2025 examination. This can be quite confusing, especially when most of the resources available online are still in the format of the old syllabus.
This article aims to make these changes clear and provide a better understanding of what’s new in the syllabus. However, for a more detailed and specific understanding of the new curriculum, we recommend checking out the official syllabus guide for physics.
Change #1 - Elimination of Options
In the previous syllabus, there were core units that every student had to learn and study, along with additional option units that HL students would select for their Paper 3. The 2025 syllabus brings good news and bad news. The good news is that the IB has eliminated options and Paper 3 altogether.
The bad news? As an HL student, you are now required to learn all the units, with the exception of astrophysics, which has been entirely removed by the DP. While the depth of each topic has slightly decreased, the breadth of knowledge required has significantly increased with the 2025 syllabus changes.
Change #2 - Examination Format
Previously, there were three papers:
- Paper 1 with multiple-choice questions
- Paper 2 with short-answer and extended-response questions
- Paper 3 with data-based, short-answer, and extended-response questions, based on additional optional units such as relativity, engineering physics, astrophysics, etc.
The 2025 examination will consist of only two papers for all sciences.
Paper 1 Section A
- SL students will answer 25 multiple-choice questions.
- HL students will answer 40 multiple-choice questions.
Paper 1 Section B
- Both HL and SL students will answer 20 marks of data-based questions with multiple parts (i/ii/iii) short-answer questions..
- This section will contain data analysis questions, allowing students to be assessed on some of the experimental skills and techniques.
Paper 2
Paper 2 carries a weightage of 44% and will consist of short-answer questions on syllabus content with multi-part questions on syllabus content. Here are some more details regarding paper 2
- The Total marks for the SL paper is 55 marks for SL students and for HL it is 90
- SL students have 1.5 hours to complete them and 2.5 hours for HL students.
- This means that SL students have about 1.6 minutes for each mark and HL students have about 1.7 minutes per mark.
Change #3 - Internal Assessments Criteria
The Internal Assessment (IA) has undergone several changes. Here are the key changes:
- The word limit has been set to 3,000, replacing the previous page limit.
- The personal engagement criteria have been removed.
- New criteria have been implemented:
- Research design (6 Marks)
- Data Analysis (6 Marks)
- Conclusion (6 Marks)
- Evaluation (6 Marks)
- The IB has introduced group IAs for data collection.
However, the weightage of the IA remains unchanged at 20% of the final grade.
Conclusion
These are the main changes in the new 2025 syllabus for the experimental sciences. This syllabus represents a significant shift, and we hope this article has been helpful in navigating these changes. If you’re looking for resources that could help you organize the format of the new 2025 syllabus, do check out our newly uploaded resources for physics. Embrace the change and gear up for an exciting journey of learning physics!