What the 2024 exam revealed about sequencing, carry-over errors and time pressure
Multi-part questions are designed to test control
The 2024 Physics exam made heavy use of multi-part questions. On the surface, these look helpful. Earlier parts guide students toward later ones. Information is often shared. The physics unfolds step by step.
In practice, this structure exposed a major weakness: students rushed the early parts, and the damage compounded.
Multi-part questions don’t just test knowledge. They test whether students can maintain control as the task evolves.
How small early errors become big losses
The examiner’s feedback repeatedly noted situations where an incorrect value from an early part was carried through without reflection.
Students continued calculating confidently, even though the result no longer made physical sense. Because the later parts relied on that value, multiple marks were lost from a single early mistake.
The physics wasn’t the problem. The lack of checking was.
Why “follow-through marks” don’t save students
Many students assume that if they get the first part wrong, the rest doesn’t matter. Others assume that follow-through marking will protect them regardless.
The 2024 exam showed the limits of that assumption.
Follow-through only applies if the method is appropriate and the reasoning remains consistent. If an early error reveals a misunderstanding of the model, later answers built on it cannot be rewarded.
Students who lost the most marks here didn’t just calculate incorrectly. They applied the wrong physics and kept going.
When students answer parts in isolation
Another pattern that appeared across several questions was students treating each part as a standalone task.
They ignored values they had already found. They re-derived quantities unnecessarily. Or they introduced new assumptions that contradicted earlier parts.
Multi-part questions reward continuity. Examiners expect students to build logically from what they have already established.
Breaking that chain weakens the response.
Why time pressure makes this worse
Under exam conditions, students often feel pressure to keep moving.
They solve part (a), glance at the answer, and immediately jump into part (b) without checking whether the result is reasonable. There’s no pause. No sanity check. No reflection.
The examiner’s report makes it clear that many incorrect responses would have been caught by a simple physical check: does this value make sense?
Rushing turns avoidable errors into guaranteed ones.
The overlooked skill of stopping mid-question
Strong Physics students do something that feels counterintuitive under time pressure.
They stop.
They take a moment to assess whether the answer they’ve just found fits the physical situation. They adjust if necessary. Then they continue.
This pause is not wasted time. It is damage control.
When diagrams and working could have saved marks
In several multi-part questions, the examiner noted that students who drew simple diagrams or wrote down relationships explicitly were far less likely to lose track of the system.
Those who worked mentally or compressed steps into a single line were more likely to carry errors forward.
Clarity early stabilises everything that follows.
Why multi-part questions expose habits, not gaps
These questions don’t require more content. They require better habits.
Students who approach each part with intention tend to recover even if something goes wrong early. Students who rush tend to unravel.
The exam doesn’t punish mistakes. It punishes unexamined ones.
A practical discipline for multi-part questions
After finishing each part, ask one question:
“If this answer were true, would the next part still make sense?”
That question alone catches a large number of errors before they spread.
What this means for Physics preparation
Preparation should include practising multi-part questions in full, not just isolated sub-questions.
Students need to practise checking, carrying forward results carefully, and maintaining a consistent physical model across parts. Without that practice, time pressure magnifies every weakness.
Working with ATAR STAR
ATAR STAR Physics tutoring trains students to manage multi-part questions with control rather than speed.
We focus on helping students stabilise their reasoning, check their results, and maintain coherence across question parts. Students learn when to pause, when to push on, and how to recover when something goes wrong.
If multi-part questions feel like a spiral rather than a scaffold, ATAR STAR helps students learn how to use them properly — and keep their marks intact.