What is a practical exam and how is it assessed?

A practical exam tests whether you can do the subject, not only read it. There are usually three parts: performing the assigned experiment, submitting your practical notebook, and answering the examiner’s questions in a viva.

Students routinely underrate the notebook. It is the record of a year’s work — which experiment you did when, what you observed, what you concluded. You can write the whole thing in the final week, but it shows, and it makes the viva harder to get through.

The viva usually covers the names and uses of the apparatus, the principle behind the experiment, and why your result came out as it did. Understanding serves you better than memorisation here, because the questions often come from the experiment you yourself performed.

How many marks the practical carries in a given subject, and how they are split, is set out in the board’s mark distribution, which is revised from time to time — so take the figure from the notice for your own exam year.