IB Exams
IB Exams Now Have 3 Timezones in May — More Practice Papers, But the Style Is Changing
By Ejaz Ahmad, Photon Academy | March 2026
By Ejaz Ahmad, Photon Academy | March 2026
Something significant has changed in how the IB administers its examinations — and most students and parents are not aware of it. The IBO now runs three separate exam timezones in the May session and two timezones in the November session for Mathematics and the Sciences. Each timezone sits a different version of the paper.
This has a real implication for students preparing for exams: it means the pool of available past paper material is growing faster than it ever did before. Three May papers per year instead of one means three times as many real exam questions entering circulation each session.
But here is the part that does not get discussed enough: the papers themselves are changing in character. Over the past several sessions, I have noticed a clear and consistent shift in how the IB is testing students — and simply working through old past papers is no longer sufficient preparation. This post explains what is happening, what it means for exam preparation, and why it reinforces the case for tuition that is exclusively focused on the IB.
The IB Diploma Programme is sat by students in over 150 countries simultaneously. To prevent paper leakage across time zones — where a student in Singapore finishing an exam could share questions with a student in London who has not yet sat it — the IBO runs multiple versions of each paper, administered at different times of day across global regions.
For the May session, there are now three distinct exam timezones (TZ1, TZ2, TZ3) for subjects including Mathematics and the Sciences. Each timezone receives a different version of the paper — same syllabus, same assessment objectives, but different questions.
For the November session, there are two timezones operating for the same subjects.
The practical result: where students previously had one set of past papers per session to practise from, there are now up to three. Over time, this significantly expands the total volume of available real IB exam questions — which is genuinely good news for students who know how to use them.
The IBO provides official information on examination administration and session structure on the IBO assessment and exams page. For subject-specific assessment details, the relevant subject guide for each course outlines the exact paper structure and timing.
The expanding pool of past papers is a genuine advantage for well-prepared students. More real exam questions mean more variety in practice, more exposure to different ways the IB can test the same concept, and greater confidence going into the exam room.
However, there is an important caveat that I want to be direct about: more past papers does not mean more predictability. The IB does not recycle questions between timezones or sessions. Each paper is independently set. A student who has worked through every available timezone paper will be better prepared — but not because they have "seen the types of questions." They will be better prepared because they have practised thinking the way the IB expects them to think.
This distinction matters enormously for how students should approach exam preparation. The goal is never to memorise question formats. The goal is to build the underlying skills — algebraic fluency, conceptual reasoning, data interpretation, written explanation — that allow a student to answer a question they have never seen before.
For our students at Photon Academy, the additional timezone papers give us more high-quality practice material to work through during lessons. But we use them to reinforce understanding, not to identify "likely" question types. The IB is deliberately unpredictable in that respect.
I have been teaching IB Mathematics and Physics exclusively for over 15 years, and I want to be direct: the papers today are meaningfully different from those from five or even three years ago. Students and parents who are preparing using predominantly older past papers are, in my view, not preparing for the exam that will actually be sat.
Here is what I am observing across subjects:
Across IB Mathematics and IB Physics in particular, the recent papers have consistently rewarded students who can explain why something is true, not just demonstrate that they can apply a method. Questions increasingly ask students to "justify", "explain your reasoning", or "comment on the validity" of a result — all of which require conceptual depth, not procedural fluency alone.
A student who has memorised fifty integration techniques but cannot explain what an integral represents in context will drop marks on modern IB papers that a student with genuine conceptual understanding would collect easily.
Older IB papers tended to test topics in relative isolation — a question on vectors stayed within vectors, a question on trigonometry stayed within trigonometry. Recent papers increasingly present multi-topic questions where a student must connect ideas across different parts of the syllabus. This is particularly pronounced in IB Math AA HL and in the new IB Physics 2025 syllabus, where the five integrated themes (A–E) are designed precisely to encourage this kind of cross-topic thinking.
The IB has always used specific command terms — "define", "state", "explain", "evaluate", "discuss", "construct", "derive" — each with a precise meaning in the mark scheme. Over recent sessions, the distinction between these terms has become sharper in the marking, with examiners awarding fewer marks for responses that address a lower-demand command term when a higher one was asked. Students who treat "explain" and "describe" as interchangeable are consistently losing marks.
In IB Chemistry, IB Physics, and IB Biology, I have observed a growing number of questions that present students with an unfamiliar experimental scenario and ask them to apply their knowledge to analyse it. This tests genuine scientific understanding, not the ability to replicate a familiar procedure. The new syllabus structures in Physics and Chemistry — both first examined in 2025 — reinforce this direction explicitly.
In IB Economics, the shift toward higher-order evaluation has been particularly noticeable. Paper 1 responses are increasingly rewarded for nuanced, balanced argument that acknowledges limitations and real-world context — not just textbook diagrams drawn correctly. Students who prepare only by practising diagram recall are underprepared for this.
Given these shifts, here is my practical advice for IB students in Singapore preparing for the 2026 or 2027 examination sessions:
Work through papers from all available timezones. But do not simply complete them and move on. After every paper, review every question you lost marks on against the official mark scheme — not to memorise the correct answer, but to understand why the mark scheme rewards what it rewards. The mark scheme is a window into what the IB considers quality thinking.
Given the style shift I described above, papers from the past two or three sessions should take priority in your practice schedule. Older papers still have value for building foundational skills and topic coverage, but the style gap means that a student who only practises on papers from 2018–2020 may be surprised by the approach of a 2025 or 2026 paper.
For IB Maths, the skill is algebraic reasoning, clear written working, and the ability to construct logical arguments. For IB Physics, it is connecting quantitative analysis to physical intuition. For IB Economics, it is constructing nuanced arguments with real-world evidence. Each subject has a specific intellectual style — and that style is what the exam is ultimately testing.
The conceptual depth the IB now demands is built over time, not in a few months of revision. Students who begin exam-aware practice from the start of Year 1 consistently outperform those who defer it. This is particularly true for IB Math AA HL and IB Physics HL, where the volume and difficulty of content means late starters are always playing catch-up.
I want to be direct about something, because I think it matters for parents making decisions about tuition.
A general Maths tutor — even a very good one — is not equipped to prepare a student for the IB. Not because they lack subject knowledge, but because the IB is not testing subject knowledge in the conventional sense. It is testing a specific intellectual style: the ability to think and communicate in the way IB examiners reward. That style is learned through deep, sustained exposure to the IB's assessment framework — and it is only genuinely understood by tutors who work exclusively within that framework.
This is not a sales pitch. It is the honest conclusion I have reached after 15 years of watching students come to me having been tutored by capable general tutors who did not understand the IB mark scheme, the command terms, or the specific way the IB expects a student to structure a response. The content knowledge was often there. The IB-specific exam technique was not.
At Photon Academy, every tutor on our team teaches IB subjects and only IB subjects. Mr Ejaz has taught IB Mathematics and Physics exclusively for 15+ years. Mr B (Bahador) is an active IB examiner for English and a published TOK author. Ms Bea holds a Master's degree in Economics and has lectured at university level. Ms S. scored 45/45 in the IB Diploma taking CS HL, Maths AA HL, and Physics HL. None of them teach anything other than IB. This is a deliberate choice — and it is the foundation of the results our students achieve.
You can read more about our tutors on the Photon Academy tutor profiles page.
Based on what I see in the exam sessions and in our students' results, here are the subjects where the shift toward conceptual understanding — combined with the growing complexity of the papers — makes specialist IB tuition most valuable:
IB Mathematics is the subject where the gap between "good at Maths" and "good at IB Maths" is widest. The style of questioning, the expectation for written working, and the demands of Paper 3 (HL) require specific preparation that general Maths tutors rarely provide. With the expanded timezone paper pool, there is now more practice material available — but using it effectively requires understanding what the mark scheme is actually looking for.
The new IB Physics 2025 syllabus has raised the bar significantly. With special relativity, rotational mechanics, and stellar physics now core content for all students, and a shift toward application in unfamiliar contexts, the demand on conceptual understanding is higher than at any point in the past decade. A tutor who has not studied the new syllabus guide in detail cannot adequately prepare students for it.
The restructured IB Chemistry syllabus (also first assessed 2025) places greater emphasis on atomic-level understanding and the connections between organic chemistry, bonding, and reactivity. Students who can only apply procedures without understanding the underlying chemistry are increasingly disadvantaged by the style of recent papers.
IB Economics has always rewarded evaluation, but recent papers have raised the bar for what constitutes genuine evaluation versus surface-level commentary. The best tutors in this subject are those who understand both the technical economics and the specific argumentative style the IB rewards — which is distinct from university economics and from A-Level Economics.
IB English and Theory of Knowledge are perhaps the clearest examples of why a specialist matters. Both subjects are assessed using frameworks that are unique to the IB — the individual oral, the HL essay, the TOK exhibition and essay — and require tutors who are actively embedded in the IB examining community to teach effectively.
With the completely restructured IB Computer Science syllabus (first examined May 2027), students face a course that general programming tutors are entirely unprepared to teach. The new syllabus combines machine learning, SQL, object-oriented programming, and abstract data types within a specific IB assessment framework that requires dedicated specialist teaching.
This comes up regularly, so I want to address it directly. Generative AI tools — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — can be genuinely useful for explaining concepts, checking working, or exploring ideas. For an IB student, they have a place.
But they cannot replace specialist IB tuition, for one fundamental reason: they do not know what the IB mark scheme rewards this year. They cannot tell you whether your response to a "justify" question would earn full marks, partial marks, or zero — because they do not have access to the current mark scheme, they do not know how examiner philosophy has shifted in recent sessions, and they have no understanding of the specific way the IB grades a response versus how a general marker might.
The IB's style is too specific, and it evolves too quickly, for any general tool to substitute for someone who lives inside it.
The expansion of IB exam timezones is a genuine development that gives students more practice material to work with. But more practice papers only translate into better results when students are being guided by someone who understands precisely what those papers are testing — and how the IB's expectations have evolved. The shift toward conceptual understanding, cross-topic thinking, and rigorous command-term compliance is not a trend that will reverse. It is the direction the IB is moving, and preparation needs to move with it.
If you would like to discuss how Photon Academy can support your child's IB preparation — whether for Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Economics, English, TOK, or Computer Science — get in touch with us or WhatsApp us directly. We offer trial lessons across all subjects.
Photon Academy tutors teach IB subjects — and only IB subjects. Trial lessons available across Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Economics, English, TOK, Chinese, Biology and Computer Science.
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