IGCSE Economics (0455): Yearly Past Paper Question Breakdown, 2020–2026

Single-variant India session, as always. This A* threshold (125) is the highest of any March session in our archive — a full 8 marks above March 2020's later-confirmed figure and matching June 2024's own hardest variant almost exactly.

Reading the single paper directly, Unit 3 and Unit 4 recur most across Section A and B combined, with the Suez Canal question (Q4) doing real analytical work rather than testing recall alone. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

No Principal Examiner Report exists for this session. Read directly from the paper.

The Suez Canal question is worth flagging specifically: it asks candidates to analyse why the price elasticity of demand differs between two named goods (luxury chocolate and salt) using real-world reasoning about necessity and substitutability, rather than a pre-labelled diagram. This is a good example of the syllabus rewarding applied judgement over memorised definitions — a student who can only recite the PED formula, without reasoning about which of two goods behaves more like a necessity, would be stuck on this specific part regardless of how well they know the theory.

The lowest A* threshold of any session covered in this archive — Option X needed just 112/150. A 10-mark gap to Option Y's 122 is also the widest spread between variants we've seen, suggesting Component 11/21 ran noticeably harder than 12/22 or 13/23 this specific session.

Unit 3 carries this session more than any other single area across all three variants, with Unit 4 and Unit 2 recurring throughout Section A specifically. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

No Principal Examiner Report exists for this session. Read directly from Paper 21 (Paper 22/23 checked for topic coverage only).

Format is unchanged — the same four-part identify/explain/analyse/discuss shape every session so far has used. What's distinct here: several (c) "analyse" parts ask for a causal explanation running in a specific, sometimes counter-intuitive direction — for example, why women may be paid less than men (Question 2(c)) demands a structured labour-market argument, not a one-line assertion, and a weak answer that just restates the pay-gap fact without explaining a mechanism would likely struggle against the mark scheme's expectation of genuine analysis.

A tighter spread between options than most sessions — only 2 marks separate the lowest (X, 122) and highest (Y, 124) A* threshold, versus a 12-mark spread the following November. Suggests the three variants were unusually well-matched for difficulty this session.

Unit 3 and Unit 4 dominate across all three variants, with several questions requiring two related concepts held together rather than one explained in isolation. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

No Principal Examiner Report exists for this session. What follows is our own read of Paper 21 in full detail (Paper 22 and 23 checked for topic coverage only).

The same rigid four-part template holds again: identify(2) → explain(4) → analyse(6) → discuss(8), context paragraph first, no structural variation across any of the four Section B questions. Two things stand out reading it directly. First, the source material leans more heavily on named international organisations and policy detail than the 2025 sessions do — the WTO, specific tariff percentages, named central banks by country — which rewards students comfortable engaging with real institutional detail rather than paraphrased-generic scenarios. Second, several questions require genuinely linking two ideas rather than explaining one in isolation — Question 4's part (b), for instance, asks how the price of *substitutes and complements* (two related PED concepts at once) affects demand for a third good, which is a step up in required synthesis from a single-concept explain question.

Reading the single paper directly, Unit 4 and Unit 6 recur most, with trade, tax and macro policy anchoring both Section A and Section B. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

On the MCQ paper, several of the weakest-scoring questions involved a genuine calculation trap rather than a concept gap — inverting a PED formula's numerator and denominator, misreading a cost table's "total variable cost" column as "average variable cost," and a inflation-diagram question where half the candidates confused a falling inflation *rate* with an actual fall in the price level (deflation). That last one is a specific, well-documented misconception worth flagging directly: a positive-but-falling inflation rate still means prices are rising, just more slowly — many candidates read the graph as showing prices dropping.

On the structured paper, the standout finding was procedural rather than content-based: candidates who answered questions out of a jumbled order (hopping between Question 2(a), 3(b), 1(d) rather than working through in sequence) consistently lost focus and coherence, even when they knew the content. The examiner explicitly noted straightforward Q1-then-three-optionals or three-optionals-then-Q1 both work fine — it's the jumping between them mid-question that causes problems, not the choice of order itself.

A 16-mark gap between Option X's A* (109) and Option Y's (125) — the widest spread in our archive so far, even bigger than June 2024's 10-mark gap. Component 11/21 was clearly the more demanding combination this specific session.

Unit 3 (money and banking, firms, workers) and Unit 4 recur most across the three variants, with Section A leaning noticeably toward Unit 5 (development, poverty, population) in every paper. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

Across all three structured papers this session, one distinction recurs more than any other single issue we've seen in any report so far: candidates confusing "productivity" with "production." The examiner notes this explicitly as a repeat problem flagged in "most" prior reports too — production is total output; productivity is output per unit of input (typically per worker). Writing one when the mark scheme expects the other loses marks even when the surrounding economics is otherwise sound. The current-account-deficit-versus-budget-deficit confusion, now confirmed in every session we've covered, appears again here too.

On Section A specifically, examiners noted that failing to use the source material cost real marks on two separate parts of the same question (1(f) and 1(g)) — a stronger version of the same "use the data" instruction that shows up nearly every session, but unusual in costing marks on two parts of one question rather than being a single-part issue.

Ski-resort pricing, digital money, Malaysia’s shift away from rubber specialisation, and sky-high house prices anchor Section B, while Section A leans heavily on Unit 6 across all three variants. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

Two clear, practical findings this session. First, time management specifically on the longer part (d) questions — a meaningful number of candidates ran out of time before reaching the required number of responses, or reached them but had to rush the discursive discussion questions, producing Level 1 answers that a candidate's underlying knowledge didn't reflect. Second, a genuinely good example of context-specificity: the Montenegro privatisation question required candidates to evaluate the effect specifically from the *consumer's* point of view, as stated in the question — answers that discussed the effect on firms instead, however accurate, weren't answering the question that was actually asked.

Examiners also gave a concrete definition of what separates the three discussion levels this session: Level 1 states relevant points without development, Level 2 develops points but stays one-sided or shallow on one side, Level 3 requires genuine two-sided depth — a cleaner, more explicit breakdown than most sessions spell out directly.

The lowest March-session A* threshold in our archive by a wide margin — 24 marks below March 2024's 125 and 20 below March 2025's 125.

Reading the single paper directly, Unit 4 anchors Section A while Section B spreads more evenly across Units 1, 3 and 5. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

The key message this session is unusually specific and quotable: examiners flagged candidates making economically exaggerated claims to strengthen an argument — the example given was a candidate writing that if people save more, "they will not spend anything," when the reality is a marginal shift in spending, not an absolute stop. An exaggeration like this undermines everything built on top of it, even when the underlying direction of the argument is correct. Examiners also flagged over-long answers to short "identify/state/define" parts — these are 2-mark, precision-over-length questions, and writing more doesn't earn more.

Unit 6 is the clear anchor of this session, appearing directly in most of the twelve Section B questions across all three variants, alongside a strong secondary presence of Unit 4. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

Command-word precision is the through-line of this session's key messages: examiners explicitly reminded that "define" wants a precise, short meaning — not an extended explanation — while "discuss" demands a genuinely balanced, structured response. Several candidates over-answered short define/identify parts at the expense of time available for the harder discussion questions, echoing March 2022's same finding almost exactly. On Section A, the data-response question required analysing a relationship between GDP per head and the proportion of females in a specific field from a source table — candidates who described the numbers without analysing the relationship itself lost marks, a now-familiar "use the data, don't just quote it" pattern.

Unit 4 and Unit 6 intertwine more than in most sessions here, with fixed-versus-floating exchange rates and monetary policy showing up alongside corporate taxation. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

All three key messages this session point at the same root issue: not following the paper's explicit instructions. Some candidates answered parts from all four Section B questions rather than the required three — examiners note this directly reduces marks available, since time spent on a fourth, non-counted question is time not spent developing the three that actually count. The instruction itself ("answer three questions from Section B") sits on page 1, described as easy to miss if a candidate doesn't read the full instruction block before starting.

Reading the single paper directly, Unit 5 and Unit 4 anchor Section A, with the rest of the paper spreading across Units 1, 2 and 3. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

The strongest candidates this session shared a specific, listable set of habits examiners spelled out directly: using the source material properly on Question 1, recognising that Questions 2–5's opening stems set context for the whole question (not just part (a)), answering short (a) parts accurately without padding, and — notably — understanding that (b) parts require both identifying and explaining a point, not one or the other. That last one is a distinction worth drilling specifically, since "identify" alone (without the explanation) is a Level 1 ceiling even when the point itself is correct.

Unit 4 and Unit 6 recur most across the three variants, with a genuinely diverse spread of source countries this session. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

Beyond the structural note above, examiners flagged that Section A's early parts (1a through 1f) rely heavily on the source material, while the later parts (1g, 1h) allow — but still expect — some independent reasoning beyond just the data. This a/b split within Section A itself is a useful distinction: don't assume every part of Question 1 needs the same "stick strictly to the data" approach. On the newly-introduced levels-based (d) marking specifically, examiners stressed that a good answer needs visible structure — basic concept first, then a built-up, developed discussion — rather than a flat list of points at a single level of depth.

Unusually, Option X set the highest A* threshold this session (113) rather than the lowest — the reverse of the pattern in most other sessions we've covered, where X tends to be the more forgiving variant.

Unit 4 (taxation, inflation, monetary policy) and Unit 6 recur most, with a genuinely policy-and-current-events-driven set of source questions across all three variants. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

Building on June 2021's structural note, examiners again flagged the still-relatively-new levels-based marking for part (d) as the area most affecting performance. More specifically this session: a meaningful number of candidates struggled on part (a) questions specifically — normally the easiest, highest-scoring part of each Section B question — with basic terms like how unemployment is measured and the definition of free trade. Examiners were explicit that this is unusual and concerning precisely because (a) parts are meant to be a reliable scoring floor, not a discriminator.

The highest A* threshold in this entire archive, any session, any year — 127/150. Two marks above March 2024's 125, which is the next-highest March session we've covered.

Reading the single paper directly, this session runs a genuinely broad spread: Unit 4 (tax, growth) and Unit 1 (factors of production, opportunity cost, PPC) both carry real weight, with no single unit dominating the way later sessions often show. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

The clearest, most actionable finding here is pure timing advice: examiners recommended roughly 45 minutes on Question 1 and 30 minutes per optional question, and noted that some candidates overspent specifically on part (a) questions and on Question 1(b) and 1(e) — the shorter, lower-mark parts — leaving less time for the higher-value analysis and discussion parts. This is one of the few sessions where examiners gave an explicit, numeric time budget rather than a general "manage your time" comment.

A broad, genuinely global spread touching Unit 6, Unit 4, and Unit 3 across all three variants, with no single unit dominating the way some later sessions do. The breakdown by question:

Topic numbers follow the outgoing (2026) syllabus's own subtopic numbering.

Note on the MCQ paper this session specifically: candidate numbers were too low for a meaningful statistical report, so that component's commentary is thin by nature, not omission. On the structured paper, examiners reiterated the same 45/30-minute timing guidance as March 2020, and flagged that Section B question selection matters as much as answering — candidates should weigh up the (c) and (d) parts of all four options before committing to three, rather than picking based on the easier-looking (a) and (b) parts alone and getting stuck later.