The syllabus is the exam's table of contents.

How to use the WAEC syllabus properly

Most candidates read the syllabus once in January and never open it again — then spend the year studying whatever their school happens to cover. The candidates who make A1s work the other way round: the syllabus runs their revision, and everything else serves it. This guide shows you how.

What is actually inside a WAEC syllabus

Every subject’s syllabus has the same four parts, and each one tells you something you can use:

1. The aims and objectives — what WAEC says the subject should teach you. Examiners write questions to test these objectives, so verbs like calculate, explain and identify in the syllabus predict the verbs you will meet on the paper.
2. The scheme of examination — how many papers, how many questions, how many you answer, the time for each and the marks. This is where you learn that Mathematics Paper 2 is answer-10-of-13, or that Biology Paper 1 gives you exactly one minute per question. We print this scheme at the top of every subject page here.
3. The topic list — the sections and topics questions can come from, with notes on what is included and what is excluded. If a topic is not on this list, WAEC cannot set it. If it is, it is fair game — even if your school never taught it.
4. Practical, oral or project requirements — the parts candidates forget: Physics and Biology practical expectations, the Test of Orals in English, drawing standards. These carry real marks and are printed in the same document.

How to turn the syllabus into a study plan

1. Count backwards from the exam. Open your subject’s page here and count its sections, then count the weeks you have left. Divide. That number — topics per week — is your plan. Twenty weeks and forty topics means two topics a week; miss a week and the maths changes, so re-count monthly.
2. Weight by marks, not by fear. Topics that feed the compulsory sections and the objectives (which sample the whole syllabus) come first. In Mathematics, algebra, mensuration, geometry, trigonometry and statistics appear every single year; give them more weeks than the topics that appear occasionally.
3. Work in three passes. Pass one: learn the topic and tick it. Pass two: sit a short practice paper and see whether the tick was honest. Pass three, in the final month: re-tick the whole list from a blank page — whatever fails the re-tick is your last-week revision list.
4. Timetable the papers, not just the reading. One timed practice paper per subject per week from three months out. Reading feels like progress; scoring is progress.

Use the built-in study tools

• Topic tick-boxes on every subject’s syllabus page, with a live percentage — tick only what you can answer without notes. The ticks reset when you leave the page, which is a feature: re-ticking from zero at each revision session shows you what actually stuck.
• Two practice modes. Exam mode runs like the real hall — countdown clock, no feedback until you submit. Coach mode marks every question instantly and shows the working; use it while a topic is still new, then graduate to exam mode.
• The topic breakdown on your score screen ranks your weakest topics first after every paper — it is the syllabus telling you what to reopen.
• Retry your missed topics. One button on the score screen builds a fresh paper from only the topics you just missed. Close the gap while it is still warm.
• The daily challenge on the homepage — the same five questions for every student in the country each day. Five minutes that keep every subject ticking over between full papers.

Pair the syllabus with past questions

The syllabus tells you what can be asked; past questions show you how it is asked. Use them together: finish a topic, tick it, then answer past questions on that topic alone — under time, writing your answer fully before checking. If past papers keep asking a topic in the same two or three shapes, master those shapes. And read the chief examiners’ reports if you can find them: they list, in WAEC’s own words, the mistakes that cost candidates marks the previous year. Our practice banks are original questions written line-by-line from the syllabus, so every question you sit here maps to a topic you can go and tick.

WAEC Syllabus, Past Questions and CBT Practice

The three work as one system, and the loop between them is the whole method:

1. Study the syllabus. Know exactly what WAEC expects you to cover — nothing more, nothing less. Browse the WAEC syllabus by subject.
2. Practise questions in past-question style. Our bank of 63,045 questions is written to the same specifications as past WASSCE papers, so you learn how each topic is actually asked. Start WAEC CBT practice.
3. Review your weak topics and return to the syllabus. Every paper is scored topic by topic; drill what you missed in WAEC topics, then tick it off the syllabus.

Syllabus → topic → practice → score → weak topic → syllabus. Every part of that loop lives on this site, free, for school (SSCE) and private (GCE) candidates alike — the syllabus is the same for both; only the sitting differs.

WAEC Syllabus by Subject — Read Online or Download the PDF

Every subject below has its own full syllabus page: the scheme of examination, every examinable topic area, frequently asked questions, and a free watermarked WAEC syllabus PDF you can download and study offline.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Studying only what your teacher covered. WAEC sets from the syllabus, not from your school’s scheme of work. Uncovered topics are still examinable — find them on the list and close them yourself.
• Reading instead of testing. Highlighting a topic is not knowing it. If you cannot score on a short paper about it, the tick was a lie.
• Question-spotting. Betting that a topic “must come out” this year is how candidates walk into Paper 1, which samples everything, unprepared.
• Ignoring the scheme of examination. Knowing the content but not the paper — how many questions, which sections are compulsory, how long you have — loses marks you already earned.
• Skipping the “small” parts. Orals, practicals, drawing standards and units are printed in the syllabus because they carry marks. An answer without units in Physics is a wrong answer.
• Starting the syllabus in the final term. The topic list divided by four weeks is panic; divided by thirty weeks it is a plan.

Syllabus questions candidates ask