Changes to syllabus

I realised that there is a lot of changes in the syllabus that I need to be aware of.

These are the ones that I'm aware of:

1. For A.maths, there is a new chapter called plane geometry. It's reputed to be so difficult that even teachers have problems solving them. I looked through my student's notes and indeed...I agree with that statement.

2. Again, for A.maths, relative velocity chapter is finally removed. This had been a bugbear for many students and schools because it's very hard to teach it properly. In fact, I've heard of countless schools where this chapter is totally skipped as the teachers agreed that students 'can still get A if they didn't do this question'. Quite lame actually.

3. For E.maths, the syllabus became simpler and shorter. I was delighted at how many chapters are being taught in Sec 3 and Sec 4. Matrix had been re-introduced back into this subject, which is perfectly fine because of the simplicity of that topic. Some minute statistical things are added, like standard deviation and what I call the 'candlestick' chart. What's even more important is the introduction of calculators in both Paper 1 and Paper 2!

Nobody knows how good/bad that is, as the first batch of students taking this new syllabus sits for the O'lvl this year.

4. Transformation had been totally removed. From now on, no students will know the finer details of what is translation, enlargement, rotation, stretching and shearing. I had such good worksheets on these...haha, oh well :)

5. For chemistry, Contact process had been removed. I didn't see it anymore in recent textbooks. It's interesting why Haber process is still included and Contact process, which is the manufacture of sulphuric acid had been removed. Perhaps there is this equilibrium thingy that needs to be taught for the Haber process but not for Contact process. Anyway, not so much changes in this respect.

Well, looks like I need to pay more attention. Unlike other syllabus changes, this time the changes are more revolutionary, especially for the maths part.

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In addition, Locus is also thrown out of syllabus. That's sad because I've seen locus since my times!