Will our F.4 Force and Motion course suit your IGCSE, IAL, IB, or AP student?

Every year a handful of our S.3 students leave the HKDSE pathway for an international qualification — most often IGCSE, sometimes IAL or IB, occasionally with a longer-horizon plan toward the US (AP). The question parents always ask is the same: now that we’re on a different exam track, is the F.4 Force and Motion course still worth signing up for?

Short answer: for an S.4-age student, yes — particularly if your child is sitting IGCSE Physics this year or next, and especially if you might eventually move them on to IAL, IB, or AP later. The longer answer is below, with the actual topic-by-topic mapping so you can judge for yourself.

Why year-level alignment matters most

Before we get to the syllabi, the single most important variable is when your child sits the exam.

• IGCSE Physics is sat in Year 10 or Year 11 — the same calendar window as Hong Kong S.3 or S.4. An S.4 student doing IGCSE this year is, in age and ability, exactly the audience our F.4 Force and Motion course was written for.
• IAL Physics is sat in Year 12 and Year 13 — equivalent to S.5 and S.6 in Hong Kong. An S.4 student sitting our F.4 course is one to two years ahead of their IAL exam.
• IB Diploma Physics is examined at the end of Year 13 — S.6 in Hong Kong. Same one- to two-year head-start dynamic as IAL.
• AP Physics 1 is usually taken in Year 11 or Year 12 (S.4 or S.5). Closest of the post-IGCSE qualifications to S.4 alignment, but still typically a year later.

This is why IGCSE is the most consequential comparison for our S.4 students, and why we treat IAL, IB, and AP as secondary — the physics maps over, but the timing rarely lines up for a student to use our course as their primary IAL/IB classroom.

What our F.4 Force and Motion course covers

The course follows DSE Physics Compulsory Part, Section II — Force and Motion (50 hours of teaching time in the official syllabus). Topics:

• Position and movement — distance vs displacement, speed vs velocity, vectors and scalars, acceleration, motion graphs (d-t, v-t, a-t), kinematic equations, free fall, 2D vector resolution.
• Force and motion — Newton’s three laws, weight vs mass, friction, free-body diagrams, equilibrium, tension, normal reaction, inclined planes, connected bodies and pulleys.
• Projectile motion — horizontal projection, projection at an angle, parabolic trajectory, range, time of flight, maximum height.
• Work, energy and power — work done by a force, kinetic energy, gravitational potential energy, conservation of mechanical energy, power (including P = Fv). (Efficiency is not introduced here — it is taught later, in the electricity / transformers context. Elastic PE / Hooke’s law is not in the DSE syllabus and is not covered.)
• Momentum — linear momentum, force as rate of change of momentum, conservation of momentum, elastic vs inelastic collisions in one dimension.
• Uniform circular motion — angular velocity, period, centripetal acceleration and force directed toward the centre.
• Gravitation — universal gravitation, gravitational field strength, velocity of an object in a circular orbit. (As enrichment — not part of the DSE core syllabus — we also mention Kepler’s third law when teaching gravitation, because it is a useful way to relate orbital period and radius.)

The course is bilingual (English with Chinese support for definitions and intuition), uses DSE-style four-line multiple-choice questions and structured long-answer problems with sub-parts, and assumes algebra plus elementary trigonometry. No calculus is required.

For an S.4-age student, this is the most directly relevant comparison. IGCSE Physics is sat in Year 10 or Year 11, with two major exam boards taken in Hong Kong: Cambridge International (syllabus 0625) and Pearson Edexcel (specification 4PH1).

What IGCSE expects, in summary

Both boards cover the same mechanics core: speed, velocity, acceleration, distance-time and velocity-time graphs, Newton’s laws (F = ma), weight and mass, friction (qualitative), Hooke’s law and elastic deformation, work, kinetic and gravitational potential energy, power, efficiency, moments, and pressure. Momentum (p = mv, impulse, conservation in one dimension) is in Edexcel 4PH1 throughout and in Cambridge 0625’s Supplement (the “Extended” tier needed for grades A* to C).

What IGCSE does not require: projectile motion as a substantial 2D topic, uniform circular motion, gravitation as a topic (just “g = 9.8 N kg⁻¹”), banking, conical pendulum, escape velocity.

How our course lines up overall

Most IGCSE motion-and-force topics are covered in our F.4 course, taught at a level of mathematical depth that is one notch above what the IGCSE paper itself asks. We also teach three full topics (2D projectile motion, circular motion, gravitation) that IGCSE does not need. There are, however, three IGCSE topics that the DSE Physics syllabus does not include — and which a pure-IGCSE student would therefore need from a different source:

• Hooke’s law and elastic deformation — load-extension graphs, spring constant, elastic limit. Not in the DSE Physics syllabus at any level.
• Density — covered in S.1 junior-secondary integrated science (F1 Unit 6.6), not in F.4 or in the DSE Physics syllabus.
• Pressure — gas pressure and the gas laws are covered in our DSE Heat and Gases course. Hydrostatic pressure in liquids (P = ρgh, manometers) is not in the DSE syllabus and would need an add-on for IGCSE.

For these three, ask us about short add-on modules — they total maybe 4–6 hours of teaching combined.

Detailed mapping — Cambridge IGCSE Physics 0625, Section 1 (Motion, forces and energy)

This is the sub-topic breakdown of the Cambridge IGCSE 0625 mechanics section (2026–2028 cycle), with what we cover for each line in F.4. CIE 0625 splits into Core (max grade C) and Supplement (Extended tier, grades A* to C).

Detailed mapping — Edexcel IGCSE Physics 4PH1, Topic 1 (Forces and motion)

Edexcel’s 4PH1 organises mechanics differently — momentum is core (not a supplement), and astronomy is bundled in with mechanics.

Side-by-side: equations and depth

The fastest way to see the overlap and the overshoot is to look at what equations a student is expected to use under each track.

Style notes for IGCSE-bound students

IGCSE markschemes reward qualitative description (“describe an experiment to investigate the motion of a trolley”) more heavily than DSE long-answer questions do. Our drills are heavier on calculation and lighter on extended description. For an IGCSE-bound student we recommend supplementing with past-paper extended-description practice — and we can point you to the right CIE and Edexcel sources.

IAL Physics is split into six units. The mechanics content lives in Unit 1 (Mechanics and Materials) and Unit 4 (Further Mechanics, Fields and Particles).

IAL Unit 1 Mechanics maps onto our F.4 course closely: rectilinear motion, vectors, projectile motion, Newton’s laws, friction, equilibrium, work/energy/power, and momentum (conservation in 1D). One difference: IAL Unit 1 also examines impulse as the area under a force–time graph, which the DSE syllabus no longer requires — a small add-on for an IAL student. Same math level (algebra plus trigonometry, no calculus needed). The exam style — structured questions with mark allocations — is also closer to DSE than to IGCSE.

IAL Unit 1 Materials is the gap. Hooke’s law, Young’s modulus, stress-strain analysis, viscosity, Stokes’ law, terminal velocity, and elastic strain energy are not in our F.4 course, because none of them are in the DSE Physics syllabus to begin with. This is a real ~8-hour add-on for an IAL Unit 1 student; we recommend planning for it explicitly rather than assuming the F.4 course will cover it.

IAL Unit 4 Further Mechanics covers circular motion in detail and revisits momentum, including 2D collisions. Our F.4 course covers the circular-motion content; momentum in F.4 stays in one dimension, so IAL’s 2D / vector collisions are a small add-on.

The year-level gap is what stops this being a primary fit: IAL is Y12–Y13. An S.4 student in our course is sitting the content one or two years before the paper. That works as advance preparation; it does not work as their main IAL classroom.

The current IB Diploma Physics syllabus is organised into five themes. Mechanics sits in Theme A: Space, Time and Motion:

• A.1 Kinematics — displacement, velocity, acceleration, motion graphs, kinematic equations, projectile motion (with qualitative treatment of air resistance).
• A.2 Forces and Momentum — Newton’s laws, free-body diagrams, friction, equilibrium, momentum, impulse, collisions, and uniform circular motion.
• A.3 Work, Energy and Power — work, kinetic energy, gravitational and elastic potential energy, power, efficiency, conservation.

For Standard Level (SL) students, our F.4 course covers essentially all of Theme A’s mechanics content. One small gap: A.3 expects students to handle elastic potential energy (springs, U = ½kx²), which sits outside the DSE syllabus — we can cover this in a short add-on session. The differences otherwise are stylistic rather than substantive: IB long-answer questions reward explanation and conceptual prose more than DSE structured questions do, and IB markschemes are strict about SI notation and quantity symbols. (Note: gravitation in IB lives in Theme D — Fields — rather than in Theme A. We cover it in F.4 either way.)

Higher Level (HL) students get two additional Theme A topics: A.4 Rigid Body Mechanics (torque, moment of inertia, angular momentum) and A.5 Galilean and Special Relativity. Neither is in our F.4 course. A.5 is essentially conceptual and easy to add as a short top-up; A.4 is the real new content for HL.

First, an important clarification: the SAT Subject Test in Physics was discontinued by College Board in January 2021 for US students and June 2021 internationally. It is no longer a test a Hong Kong student can sit. Anything you read online that recommends “SAT Physics prep” is referencing a discontinued exam.

For US-bound STEM students, the practical replacement is AP Physics, in one of two forms:

• AP Physics 1 (algebra-based). Restructured for the May 2025 exam into eight units: Kinematics; Force and Translational Dynamics; Work, Energy and Power; Linear Momentum; Torque and Rotational Dynamics; Energy and Momentum of Rotating Systems; Oscillations (Simple Harmonic Motion); and Fluids. Our F.4 course covers Units 1, 2 and 4 in full and most of Unit 3 — the mechanics that maps onto DSE Section II. One small gap in Unit 3: AP Physics 1 expects students to handle Hooke’s law and elastic potential energy for springs, which are not in the DSE syllabus. Units 5 through 8 (rotational dynamics, rotational energy and momentum, SHM, fluids) are not in our course and are genuine extension content.
• AP Physics C: Mechanics (calculus-based). Same topic spine as AP Physics 1 but expressed in calculus — derivatives for instantaneous velocity and acceleration, integrals for variable-force work, differential equations for oscillation and rotation. The physics content overlaps about 90% with our course; the calculus is the barrier. Most S.4 students have not yet studied differential calculus, which is the real prerequisite rather than the physics itself.

If your child is on an AP track, our F.4 course gives them a strong mechanics foundation — but they will need supplementary instruction on rotational dynamics, SHM and fluids for AP Physics 1, and calculus instruction (which we do not provide) before AP Physics C: Mechanics is a realistic target.

Overall topic comparison matrix

For the parents who want the bird’s-eye view across all four qualifications:

“Required” in the gap rows means the exam paper expects coverage that our course does not provide. “—” means the topic is not part of that paper at that unit.

Caveats and what to check before deciding

• IGCSE and IAL specifications go through minor revisions on a multi-year cycle. Cambridge 0625 is in the 2026–2028 cycle; Edexcel 4PH1 has been on the 2017 specification. Pull the current PDF from the exam board’s site if you want to confirm any specific wording — the structure of “Core” vs “Supplement” content on Cambridge 0625 has shifted across cycles.
• The IB Physics syllabus described here is the new specification, first examined in May 2025. Older revision materials online may still reflect the previous syllabus (the one with Topic 2 Mechanics rather than Theme A) — they describe roughly the same physics but with different topic placement.
• AP Physics 1 was significantly redesigned for the May 2025 exam, with rotational mechanics, oscillations and fluids added as full units. Pre-2024 study material is no longer a complete description of the course.
• This guide focuses on physics content. Practical assessment, internal assessment, language of exam, and the broader course shape (e.g. IB’s coursework requirements) sit outside our scope and are worth discussing with your child’s school directly.