QCE Physics Study Guide

QCE Physics is decided by four assessments in Units 3 and 4: the IA1 data test (10%), the IA2 student experiment (20%), the IA3 research investigation (20%) and the external examination (50%). Internal assessment and the exam are worth exactly the same, so neither half can carry the other. Across four cohort reports QCAA has named the same two weaknesses every time: describe and explain answers that restate a phenomenon instead of accounting for it, and formulas applied without being understood.

This guide describes Physics 2025 v1.2, published October 2024, which applied to Year 11 from 2025 and Year 12 from 2026. The 2026 Year 12 cohort is the first assessed under it. Every QCAA subject report published so far covers the 2022 to 2025 cohorts, all of whom sat Units 3 and 4 under the superseded Physics 2019 v1.2, so criterion names and mark distributions in those reports describe rules that no longer apply to your internal assessments.

How the marks add up

Those weightings are identical in the 2019 and 2025 syllabuses, so anything you read about a different split is describing a different subject. The course runs four units of 55 notional hours each. Units 1 and 2 are reported S, U or NR and judged A to E against the reporting standards, with no marks required, so nothing from Year 11 counts towards your result.

Each internal assessment is a different kind of task, and the differences run deeper than the topic:

• The IA1 data test is a supervised test on unseen stimulus containing two to four datasets, drawn from Unit 3 practicals, activities or case studies. It is marked against a single 10-mark criterion by percentage cut-off, so every mark on the paper is worth the same.
• The IA2 student experiment asks you to modify an experiment done in class, then collect and evaluate your own primary data.
• The IA3 research investigation starts from a claim your teacher supplies and evaluates it using secondary evidence, so no data is collected at all.

IA2 and IA3 both take around 10 hours of class time, and both are marked on four criteria worth 5 marks each, banded 4-5, 2-3, 1 and 0.

What QCAA keeps saying, four years running

These five findings appear in report after report across the 2022 to 2025 cohorts. Subject matter and exam technique survive a syllabus revision even where criterion names do not, so all five still describe your assessment.

1. Describe and explain answers restate instead of accounting. Named in all four external assessment commentaries: 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, with 2024 and 2025 using the same two bullets word for word. The 2023 report states it most plainly, that simply stating the phenomenon is not sufficient to receive full marks. An account needs characteristics and features, and an explanation needs a cause, reason, context or relationship.

2. Formulas get used as symbols instead of understood. The 2024 and 2025 reports say this in near-identical words, asking teachers to support students to understand both the concepts and the contexts of formulas to promote correct usage and improve accuracy in problem solving. The 2024 report sharpens it for explain questions: a response has to give more than a simple transcription of an equation from the Physics formula and data book.

3. A different cognitive verb needs work every year. The reports name them one pair at a time: describe and discuss in 2023, explain and contrast in 2024, describe and explain in 2025. Two of those come with a structure attached. A discuss response should include two different considerations and a conclusion (2023). A contrast response has to clearly differentiate the two concepts and move beyond broad generalisations to precise details (2024).

4. Graph and trendline handling is examined every year. Gradients, intercepts, null points and lines of best fit appear in the effective-practice lists or the worked exemplars of all four cohorts. The 2024 report is the most specific about what the strong responses did: they used a y-intercept to determine the magnetic flux density, or an x-intercept to determine the work function, and they picked two points on a trendline to calculate a gradient and tied that value to a physics formula. The 2022 warning is the other half of the same skill, that a line of best fit should match the data provided and should not automatically be assumed to pass through the origin.

5. Schools mark IA2 and IA3 generously. In every one of the four years, and on every criterion except the old Communication criterion, confirmation moved marks down more often than up, sometimes five or six times as often. Those criterion names are the 2019 ones and no longer exist, but the direction is a four-year pattern about how school judgments compare with QCAA's.

QCAA also checks the task before you sit it, through endorsement, and Physics has a chronic problem there. IA1 is the worst-endorsed instrument in the subject in each of the four years, never clearing 56% at Application 1, with alignment between the cognitive verb and the assessment objective the top-cited reason every time. IA3 endorsement fell from 81% in 2022 to 59% in 2025, and its alignment citations went 29, 21, 91 and then 156, with the same advice attached each year: claims have to come from Unit 4 subject matter. Neither number is under your control, and both point at the same two things. In IA1 the cognitive verb tells you which assessment objective a question is testing. In IA3 the claim you pick has to sit inside Unit 4 subject matter.

Where the marks are actually lost

QCAA publishes what the cohort did well and badly, but never at the level of a single cognitive verb. Our platform can add that resolution. Across 19,805 marked attempts on 578 QCE Physics questions, students average 73.7% overall, and four exam-facing verbs sit far below it.

Calculate at 47.2% is the independent agreement with QCAA's formulas finding, measured a different way on a different sample. Explain and describe sitting next to it agrees with the first finding. Twelve other verbs in our data score in the low 80s, but those questions are almost entirely assignment-style tasks marked against a rubric, so they measure something the exam does not ask for and are left out of the table above.

The same gap shows up by question type. Multiple choice averages 63.5% over 16,622 attempts on our platform; short answer averages 50.8% over 1,695. Roughly 13 points separate recognising the right physics from producing it in prose, and short response is where the exam puts most of its marks.

The content that gives the most trouble

These Unit 3 and Unit 4 dot points sit furthest below our 73.7% overall average. All are Science understanding, so all are externally assessable, and all clear 200 attempts.

Four of the seven are gravitation and electrostatics problems with a formula written into the dot point, which is the same weakness QCAA names from the other direction.

By subtopic, again on Science understanding questions only, orbital mechanics is our weakest at 51.5% over 1,542 attempts, followed by inclined planes and circular motion (56.1%, 3,252), projectile motion (56.6%, 1,631) and electrostatics (56.8%, 1,398). Electromagnetic induction sits at 60.1% over 5,307 attempts, magnetic fields at 63.9%, special relativity at 65.4% and quantum theory at 66.6% over 6,501. The Standard Model is our highest-scoring subtopic at 81.0%, on 155 attempts, which is thin enough that you should not read it as an easy topic.

Practise these against real past paper questions instead of notes. Unit 3 splits into gravity and motion and electromagnetism; Unit 4 into special relativity, quantum theory and the Standard Model. Each page holds real QCAA questions with the marking criteria and average scores attached, and the QCE Physics subject page collects them.

What the external exam looks like

Two written papers, each with 5 minutes perusal and 90 minutes working time, both covering Units 3 and 4. A QCAA-approved graphics or scientific calculator is permitted and the QCAA Physics formula and data book is provided. There is no ISMG for the external assessment; it is marked against the External Assessment Marking Guide published for that year.

Only Science understanding subject matter can be assessed externally. Science as a Human Endeavour and Science inquiry are assessed internally only, and the exam assesses objectives 1 to 4, so it never asks you about reliability, validity, improvements or extensions. Those belong entirely to your IAs.

The 20 multiple-choice marks in Paper 1 are the only fixed quantity. Everything else moves, and the paper grew from 90 raw marks in 2023 to 101 in 2025, all of the growth in short response. A 2023 paper is therefore a weaker time-budget rehearsal than it looks. Note also that the reported external assessment result is out of 50 whatever the raw total was, and QCAA publishes no conversion.

The multiple choice is not the free half. Counting from the response tables the four reports publish, the number of items where fewer than half the state chose the correct option ran 6 of 20 in 2022, 4 in 2023, 1 in 2024 and 5 in 2025. On our platform Paper 2 scores below Paper 1 in every year with a usable sample, by 4 to 21 points across the 2021 to 2024 papers, which is what you would expect from a paper that is entirely short response.

Do not chase a fixed grade boundary

QCAA sets these each year against the reporting standards. Three of the five cut-points moved between 2022 and 2023, and the D to E boundary moved again between 2023 and 2024. Any number you copy from an older cohort is a guess about yours.

For scale, QCAA published the 2025 distribution as 49.12% A, 37.50% B, 13.01% C and 0.37% D. The A share has climbed every year across the four, from about 40% to 49%, while C has fallen from about 20% to 13%; those earlier percentages are ours, derived from the published counts, and QCAA publishes percentages for 2025 only. No E was awarded in any of the four years, and the 2023 report records 99.09% of the cohort at C or higher. Units 3 and 4 completions went 6,429, 6,834, 7,447 and 8,302 across the same four cohorts, growth of 29% in four years, across 418 schools in 2025. QCAA's own note is that those completion figures pool the General subject with the Alternative Sequence. Treat the distribution above the same way: QCAA does not confirm whether its denominator is General only or pooled with the Alternative Sequence, and the counts behind it sum to the pooled completion figure in all four years, so read the percentages as indicative of the whole Physics cohort rather than of General alone.

What changed under the 2025 syllabus

Most of what you will find online still describes the 2019 rules. The changes that affect how you are marked:

• Communication is no longer a criterion. IA2 and IA3 each had a 2-mark Communication criterion under 2019. Genre conventions, referencing and scientific language are still marked, but now inside the other criteria, so weak referencing costs you inside a criterion worth 5 marks.
• Four criteria worth 5 marks each, banded 4-5 / 2-3 / 1 / 0, replacing the old 6 / 6 / 6 / 2 split with 5-6 / 3-4 / 1-2 / 0 bands.
• Perusal is 5 minutes, on IA1 and on both exam papers, down from 10.
• Length limits are ceilings, not ranges. Up to 2000 words or up to 11 minutes, where 2019 required at least 1500 words or 9 minutes.
• A scientific calculator is allowed, where 2019 required a QCAA-approved graphics calculator.
• IA3 permits group work on selecting a claim, identifying the relevant concepts and conducting research, and the list of scientifically credible sources now includes podcasts by well-credentialed scientists and popular science websites or magazines.

One content change matters for the 2026 exam specifically. Conservation of lepton and baryon number moved from recall to solve problems, using $B = n_b - n_{\bar b}$, $B = \tfrac{1}{3}(n_q - n_{\bar q})$ and $L = n_l - n_{\bar l}$. QCAA names it as explicitly assessable in the 2026 external assessment, and it is the largest single jump in Units 3 and 4: The Standard Model carried no formulas at all in 2019 and carries three now.

Where to start

If IA1 is next, start with the data test guide: it is the only assessment with a published question specifications table, so you can learn the shape of a paper you have not sat. If you are partway through Unit 3, the student experiment guide is where the largest single block of internal marks sits. In Unit 4, go to the research investigation guide. The other QCE subjects are indexed on the QCE hub.