Where does your teacher get chemistry exam papers from?

School exams, you know them by now. Those tests that officially count towards your diploma are often much harder in your exam year than before. Unlike the central final exam, school exams are not made by the government, but by your teacher. This is a new challenge for every teacher every year: what should you ask and how do you arrive at those assignments?

Why most teachers don't come up with the school exam assignments themselves

Your teacher can design the exercises himself or with colleagues, but it takes a lot of time to do it right. The exercises can be too difficult, too vague, too easy, too repetitive or not representative enough for the material. For example, I once had a Latin teacher who wrote texts himself, which we then had to translate during tests. She only mastered Latin so well that she could no longer see how difficult it could be for us. Her tests were therefore far too difficult. That is not so nice in a school exam, if your grade is very important! Fortunately, this can never happen on your final exam, because CITO tests the exercises on students. In this way they know for sure that assignments on the final exam should in principle be doable. Of course, your teacher does not have time for such an extensive test. From our experiences and a survey of teachers shows that many teachers use old final exams and high school chemistry textbook pdf as a source for their school exam questions. In this blog I explain how your teacher finds the right questions and how you can use this information to better prepare for your school exams.

Why the central exams are the source for the school exams

Firstly, the school exams in the exam year partly test the same material as the central exam. Final exams are therefore an ideal source for questions for your teacher. Secondly, your teacher naturally wants you to get used to the exam assignments as well as possible. What better way to do that than by using it in the school exams. Thirdly, your teacher knows for sure that the central exam questions are of a good level because these assignments have already been extensively tested by the CITO. Finally, it is of course also practical for a teacher that there is a clear, ready-made correction instruction for the central exam problems.

How do you get those assignments?

First you select your level, then you can choose an exam subject. Then you can view the exams and correction regulations per year and per period, but there is another very exciting option: you can also open all exams and correction regulations in one document. When you open that document, you can find exercises that deal with a certain topic by searching for certain words or terms (use Ctrl+F). For example, if your economics school exam is about Nash equilibriums, you can search for exercises about that. Teachers use this trick to find good exam papers. You can now also benefit from this in your exam preparation.

Practice your own exams

With this tip you can practice extra on topics that you still find difficult. Or, if you have already worked through all the exam bundles, you can practice even more with the help of this site. You can also familiarize yourself with how an exam is graded by studying the correction rules. In any case, you can move forward with your exam preparation!