A student who assumes last year’s setup still applies can be caught out by something no amount of content revision will fix. Components, timing, permitted materials and whether an exam is sat on paper or on screen all vary by subject. They also shift when a syllabus updates.
The remedy is a short workflow. Confirm the structure of each exam, confirm how it will be delivered, then make your practice match those exact conditions.
Verify the Structure of Every Subject’s Exam
The subject guide for your assessment year is the authority on component structure, mark weightings, timing and permitted materials, so check it against anything you remember from earlier years. Then run this routine once for each subject, turning the verified rules into a practice plan.
- Name the subject, the level (SL, HL or equivalent), and the session your school is entering.
- Open the current subject guide and note every component you will sit.
- For each component, record the weighting, marks and question types.
- Record the time allowed, including any reading-time rules.
- Record permitted materials: calculator policy, formula booklet and dictionaries where allowed.
- Ask your coordinator whether the subject is on paper or on screen. If it’s on screen, list the interface skills to practice.
- Schedule a full-format timed mock for this subject in that same delivery format, in a secure, exam-like setting.
- Choose practice papers that closely match your current syllabus and exam format, keeping older or mismatched papers mainly for topic practice.
- If anything is still unknown, resolve it before committing weeks of practice.
While you’re in the guide, jot down any IA or oral deadlines too, since they’re a separate workload check and not part of exam-day mechanics.
Confirm Whether Your Exam Is on Paper or on Screen
With the IB moving steadily toward digital assessment, the delivery format for a given subject and school is no longer a safe assumption. Ask your coordinator early whether each subject will be sat on screen or on paper, because the answer changes what you need to practice.
ManageBac+, an education platform, has published guidance on preparing students for IB eAssessment. Its starting point is that on-screen exams test the same content but demand extra procedural skills. You may read sources in a split view beside your response and annotate with on-screen highlighters and notepads instead of a pen. You’ll also type extended answers against the clock, using on-screen calculators, graphing utilities and equation editors that behave differently from handheld tools. These skills are manageable, but they need to feel familiar so your attention stays on the questions rather than the interface.
The same guidance recommends introducing the exam interface in the first year of the program and giving students regular, low-stakes exposure. Teachers are encouraged to use the same on-screen tools, such as split view and digital highlighters, in routine tests and formative tasks, so practice and assessment feel consistent.
It also recommends at least one full mock on-screen exam per year, run in a secure, timed setting. If you have access arrangements, plan and confirm those supports early so you can practice with them. For MYP on-screen exams, some adaptations must be requested from the IB a year in advance. Have you actually typed a timed response and used the on-screen tools under pressure yet?
On paper exams, the interface skills drop away, but timing, permitted materials and a full-format timed mock still matter. A mock is only as useful as the paper behind it.
Use Past Papers to Rehearse the Exact Format You’ve Verified
Once you know which components your exam includes, how long each paper runs and whether you’ll work on screen or on paper, past papers become a precision tool. The aim is timed rehearsal inside the exact format you’ve verified.
Free sites offering recent IB papers are the obvious shortcut, and a poor one. EagleTeach’s practitioner guide to IB past papers points out that official past papers are licensed for personal and school use only, which is why such sites are typically in breach of copyright and may carry errors or incomplete materials. Its advice is to prioritize official past papers with their markschemes, sourced through the Follett IB Store or through the resources your school provides via coordinators and teachers.
Even a legitimate paper can be the wrong one. The guide says any past paper you use should match your current syllabus and exam format, and several subjects have changed: sciences were first assessed on new syllabuses in 2025 and mathematics in 2021. Older papers may therefore differ in structure and weighting. When a syllabus changes, the IB issues specimen papers, which are the closest guide to the new exam format. Use those and the most recent syllabus-matched papers for timed, exam-like rehearsal, and keep older ones for topic work.
Having done the earlier checks, you can judge which papers suit timed practice and which suit content drilling. Organized, syllabus-matched IB past-paper resources save you the time of verifying paper years, access routes and markscheme alignment yourself. Get them through your school or other IB-authorized routes.
Formula references and topic summaries help with recall. A correctly structured past paper under timed conditions is what turns procedural awareness into practiced readiness.
A Checklist You Can Apply to Every Subject
A gap in exam mechanics is cheap to fix early and expensive to find in the exam room. Rerun the same per-subject routine for every course you take, because your practice should follow verified mechanics, not habit.
- Log: keep one line per subject and mark each of these as confirmed or open: components, timing, permitted materials, paper or screen, mock scheduled, and whether your chosen papers are for timed practice or topic work.
- Review: check it weekly until components, timing, permitted materials and delivery format are confirmed for every subject. After that, check monthly, and again whenever your school issues updates.
- Paper or screen unknown: ask your coordinator or teacher before building any practice around a particular interface.
- No mock scheduled: book one full-format timed sitting in the delivery format you expect, before your final revision stretch.
- Paper older or unclear: call it topic-only until you’ve confirmed it matches the current syllabus, and save specimen and recent matched papers for timed mocks.
- Access arrangements unconfirmed: raise them early, so you practice with the same supports you’ll have on exam day.
The questions are the same for Chemistry, History or Mathematics. Only the answers differ. Get them early and content readiness becomes exam readiness.
