What Pearson's own Issue 3 documents mark as second-year work, and where Topics 11 to 19 actually land across the three papers.
Book a Free ConsultationEdexcel A-level Chemistry (9CH0) is a Pearson qualification whose second year has no paper of its own. Topics 11 to 19 supply five of the twelve topics Pearson names for Paper 1 and four of the ten it names for Paper 2. Pearson marks that second year twice in its own Issue 3 specification: four mathematical skills printed in bold as tested only at A level, and a Data Booklet carrying seven data sets where the AS booklet carries three.
Neither marking is announced. Both sit in appendices at the back of a 110-page document.
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Our expert A-level chemistry tutors help Year 13 students work to Edexcel 9CH0 itself — the topics each written paper names, and the data a candidate is handed rather than expected to recall.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppPearson lists the topics each written paper examines, by number, on the first three pages of the 9CH0 specification. Read those lists side by side and the year boundary disappears. Paper 1 names twelve topics and Paper 2 names ten, which is twenty-two listings for nineteen topics, because Topic 2 (Bonding and Structure), Topic 3 (Redox I) and Topic 5 (Formulae, Equations and Amounts of Substance) are named on both.
Those three are the only topics examined on both written papers, and all three are first-year content. The material a student met earliest has the widest exposure in the final series.
| Paper | Topics Pearson names | Of those, Topics 11–19 | Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1: Advanced Inorganic and Physical Chemistry (9CH0/01) | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 | 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 | 5 of 12 |
| Paper 2: Advanced Organic and Physical Chemistry (9CH0/02) | 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 16, 17, 18, 19 | 16, 17, 18, 19 | 4 of 10 |
| Paper 3: General and Practical Principles in Chemistry (9CH0/03) | May draw on any topic in the specification | All nine | — |
Source: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Chemistry specification, Issue 3, February 2024, pages 1–3. The counts and the Topics 11–19 column are this page's own arithmetic on Pearson's lists; Pearson prints the lists, not the totals.
The consequence is a revision-planning one. A student who works only through Topics 11 to 19 has covered five of the twelve topics named for Paper 1 and four of the ten named for Paper 2. On both written papers, most of the named topics are first-year content being examined again at A-level standard.
Paper 3 does not resolve that either. Pearson's wording is that questions “may draw on any of the topics in this specification” and that the paper “will include synoptic questions that may draw on two or more different topics listed”. Nothing from the first year is closed off anywhere in the qualification. The AS route is different in kind — AS Chemistry (8CH0) is two papers over Topics 1 to 10 and eight core practicals — and our Year 12 Edexcel A-Level Chemistry page sets out how that separate qualification works.
Pearson never writes “Year 13” in the specification. It does distinguish second-year material from first-year material in two places, and both are mechanical enough to check rather than infer.
The first is typographical. Appendix 6 sets out the mathematical skills a chemistry candidate may be tested on, and introduces the table with a sentence that does the work: “Those shown in bold type would only be tested in the full A Level course.” The bold is not decoration. It is a published statement about which entries an AS candidate will never meet.
The second is the Data Booklet. Appendix 8 of the A-level specification sets out seven data sets; Appendix 4 of the AS specification sets out three. Both documents are Issue 3, both dated February 2024, and the four extra data sets are the difference between what an 8CH0 candidate was handed and what a 9CH0 candidate is handed.
| Data set | AS booklet (8CH0, Appendix 4) | A-level booklet (9CH0, Appendix 8) |
|---|---|---|
| Physical constants | Yes | Yes, plus the ionic product of water |
| Pauling electronegativities | Yes | Yes |
| Infrared absorption wavenumbers | Yes | Yes |
| ¹H NMR chemical shifts (relative to TMS) | No | Yes |
| ¹³C NMR chemical shifts (relative to TMS) | No | Yes |
| Indicators, with pKin at 298 K | No | Yes |
| Standard electrode potentials | No | Yes |
Source: Pearson Edexcel 9CH0 specification, Issue 3, Appendix 8, and Pearson Edexcel 8CH0 AS specification, Issue 3, Appendix 4. Both read 26 September 2026.
Two of the four additions are substantial tables. The standard electrode potentials run to thirty-one numbered half-equations, from Na+ + e− at −2.71 V to ½H2O2 + H+ + e− at +1.77 V. The indicator table lists ten indicators with their pKin values at 298 K, from thymol blue in acid at pKin 1.7 to phenolphthalein in ethanol at pKin 9.3.
The single added physical constant is easy to miss. The AS booklet gives the Avogadro constant, the elementary charge, the gas constant, the molar volume of an ideal gas at r.t.p. and the specific heat capacity of water. The A-level booklet gives all five and adds the ionic product of water, Kw = 1.00 × 10−14 mol2 dm−6 — the constant behind every pH calculation involving a base, supplied rather than recalled.
Pearson's conditions on the booklet are worth reading before a mock rather than after one: “Candidates must use an unmarked copy of the Data Booklet in examinations,” and centres “can make additional fresh copies by printing the Data Booklet from our website.” A working copy annotated across two years is not the copy that goes into the exam hall. The data is credited to the Nuffield Advanced Science Revised Book of Data (ISBN 058235448X).
A third candidate for a second-year marker turns out not to be one. Appendix 7 lists the command words used in the external assessments — twenty-five entries, from Add/Label to Write — and the list is identical in the AS and A-level documents, entry for entry, on a column-by-column comparison made on 26 September 2026. Whatever changes in the second year, the vocabulary of the questions does not.
How Edexcel's booklet compares with what other boards supply is a different question, and our A-Level Chemistry board comparison answers it with AQA's and OCR's own documents side by side. The assessment-objective weightings across Edexcel's three papers, and the sixteen core practicals behind the Science Practical Endorsement, are set out on the Edexcel A-Level Chemistry page.
The bold entries in Appendix 6 do not scatter evenly. Recovering them required reading the font rather than the text — bold is lost when a PDF is converted to plain text, so the appendix was re-read span by span on 26 September 2026 and every entry set in Verdana-Bold recorded.
Is kinetics the gap going into the final year?
Our expert A-level chemistry tutors work with Year 13 students on the 9CH0 mathematics Pearson flags as A-level only — rate equations, orders of reaction and the graphical work in Topic 16 — from a student’s own mock papers.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppFour whole skills are printed in bold: B.2.5, using logarithms in relation to quantities that range over several orders of magnitude; B.3.3, determining the slope and intercept of a linear graph; B.3.4, calculating rate of change from a graph showing a linear relationship; and B.3.5, drawing and using the slope of a tangent to a curve as a measure of rate of change. Part of the skill text at B.0.4 is bold too, where the clause about power, exponential and logarithmic functions is set apart.
Below those skills sit the worked examples, and sixteen individual bullet points are bold. Four appear twice in different rows, so there are twelve distinct examples. Grouping them by subject matter — a grouping this page has made from the wording of each bullet, not one Pearson prints — produces an uneven picture.
| Subject area | Distinct bold examples | What Pearson lists |
|---|---|---|
| Kinetics | 6 | Carrying out rate calculations; calculating a rate constant k from a rate equation; determining the order of a reaction from a graph; deriving a rate expression from a graph; calculating the rate constant of a zero-order reaction from the gradient of a concentration–time graph; determining the order of a reaction using the initial rates method |
| Acid–base equilibria | 2 | Carrying out pH and pKa calculations; making appropriate mathematical approximations in buffer calculations |
| Equilibrium constants | 2 | Calculating the value of an equilibrium constant Kc; evaluating how Kc changes with temperature under specified conditions |
| Units | 1 | Giving units for an equilibrium constant or a rate constant |
| Stereochemistry | 1 | Identifying chiral centres from a 2D or 3D representation |
Source: Pearson Edexcel 9CH0 specification, Issue 3, Appendix 6, specification pages 86–89. Bold recovered by font inspection, 26 September 2026. The five-way grouping is this page's own.
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Half the mathematics Pearson flags as second-year is kinetics, and it is the graphical half: gradients, tangents, initial rates and the arithmetic of turning a concentration–time curve into a rate constant. That is a different difficulty from the mole arithmetic of the first year, and the kind a student can follow in a lesson and then fail to reproduce under time pressure.
The Data Booklet sharpens the point rather than softening it. Thirty-one electrode potentials and ten indicators are supplied, so what those topics assess is selection and use, not recall. Nothing comparable is supplied for kinetics: no rate equations, no half-life relationships, no Arrhenius form, on a reading of Appendix 8's seven data sets taken on 26 September 2026. The topic carrying the heaviest concentration of second-year mathematics has no supporting table in the booklet at all.
Each paper carries an “Overview of assessment” block listing the question types it may contain. For Paper 1 and Paper 2 the sentence is identical: the paper “may include multiple-choice, short open, open-response, calculations and extended writing questions”. For Paper 3 the same sentence appears with one item removed: “may include short open, open-response, calculations and extended writing questions”.
Multiple-choice is absent from the list for the largest of the three papers. Paper 3 is also the paper Pearson identifies as carrying the synoptic questions, and its overview alone carries the line “Some questions will assess conceptual and theoretical understanding of experimental methods.” A student sitting it has no question format on which a considered guess scores.
That changes what useful practice looks like: full written attempts marked against a mark scheme, rather than the rapid topic-checking that works well for the first two papers.
One further point about what is fixed for the year. A Year 13 student is not entered for individual papers. Appendix 3 gives the Advanced GCE subject code as 9CH0 and says of the paper codes that they “are provided for reference purposes” and states that “Students do not need to be entered for individual papers.” The codes 9CH0/01, 9CH0/02, 9CH0/03 and the Science Practical Endorsement code 9CH0/04 label components of one entry, not four separate ones.
One qualification is worth ruling out, because the names are close enough to cause trouble when buying revision material: Pearson also publishes an Edexcel International Advanced Level in Chemistry (2018), a separate qualification with its own structure. A Year 13 student in an English school sitting GCE Chemistry is on 9CH0.
We start from the specification a student is actually entered for. For a Year 13 chemist on 9CH0 that means two things a generic A-level chemistry lesson tends to miss.
The first is where the second-year mathematics sits. Six of the twelve distinct examples Pearson prints in bold as A-level only are kinetics, and four of those are graphical. Our expert A-level chemistry tutors work through that material with the graphs in front of the student — reading a gradient off a concentration–time plot, taking a tangent, getting from an initial-rates table to an order — because those are the entries Pearson has flagged, and they cluster in Topic 16 on Paper 2.
Final year, and Paper 3 is the one that worries them?
Our expert A-level chemistry tutors take Year 13 students through full 9CH0 Paper 3 attempts against the mark scheme, with the Data Booklet open, so the synoptic paper is rehearsed rather than met cold.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe second is the exam-room material. A student who has not worked with the A-level Data Booklet open loses time looking things up, and a student who has annotated a copy over two years will be handed an unmarked one. Sessions use the booklet from the start, so selecting from the thirty-one electrode potentials or the ten indicators is routine rather than a search.
Many Year 13 chemists carry biology alongside chemistry on medicine and bioscience routes, and our tutors cover both — see our Year 13 Edexcel A-Level Biology page, or our A-Level tuition hub for a Year 13 timetable across several subjects. Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, read on 3 October 2026, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades.
No. Pearson lists the topics for each written paper on the first three pages of the 9CH0 specification, and Topics 11 to 19 are split across the first two papers rather than given one of their own. Paper 1 names twelve topics, of which Topics 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 are second-year content. Paper 2 names ten, of which Topics 16, 17, 18 and 19 are. Paper 3 may draw on any topic in the specification. On both written papers most of the named topics are first-year content being examined again at A-level standard.
Three: Topic 2 (Bonding and Structure), Topic 3 (Redox I) and Topic 5 (Formulae, Equations and Amounts of Substance). Paper 1 names twelve topics and Paper 2 names ten, which is twenty-two listings for nineteen topics, and those three account for the difference. All three are first-year content, so the material a student met earliest has the widest exposure across the two written papers. This follows from Pearson's own two lists in the Issue 3 specification of February 2024; Pearson prints the lists rather than the comparison.
Bold marks A-level-only material. Appendix 6 introduces its table of mathematical skills with the sentence: 'Those shown in bold type would only be tested in the full A Level course.' Four whole skills are bold - B.2.5 on logarithms across several orders of magnitude, B.3.3 on the slope and intercept of a linear graph, B.3.4 on rate of change from a linear graph, and B.3.5 on the slope of a tangent to a curve. Sixteen worked examples are also bold, twelve of them distinct. Bold does not survive conversion to plain text, so the appendix has to be read by font.
Four data sets and one constant. Appendix 8 of the 9CH0 specification sets out seven data sets against the three in Appendix 4 of the AS 8CH0 specification. The additions are 1H NMR chemical shifts, 13C NMR chemical shifts, a table of indicators with their pKin values at 298 K, and a table of standard electrode potentials. The A-level list of physical constants also adds the ionic product of water, Kw, at 1.00 x 10 to the minus 14 mol2 dm-6, which the AS list does not carry. Both documents are Issue 3, February 2024.
No. Pearson's wording in Appendix 8 is that 'Candidates must use an unmarked copy of the Data Booklet in examinations.' The same appendix tells centres they 'can make additional fresh copies by printing the Data Booklet from our website', so a clean copy is straightforward for a school to produce. The practical step for a Year 13 student is to work with the booklet from the start of the year, but to expect an unmarked copy on the day. The data itself is credited to the Nuffield Advanced Science Revised Book of Data, ISBN 058235448X.
Thirty-one, numbered 1 to 31 on page 98 of the Issue 3 specification. They run from sodium, Na+ plus an electron to Na, at minus 2.71 V, to hydrogen peroxide, half H2O2 plus H+ plus an electron to H2O, at plus 1.77 V. The table is one of the four data sets the A-level booklet carries and the AS booklet does not. Because the values are supplied, what an electrochemistry question tests is selection and use rather than recall - which is worth knowing before spending revision time memorising them.
Not in its published question-type list. The Issue 3 specification says Paper 1 and Paper 2 each 'may include multiple-choice, short open, open-response, calculations and extended writing questions'. The same sentence for Paper 3 reads 'may include short open, open-response, calculations and extended writing questions', with multiple-choice removed. Paper 3 is also the paper Pearson identifies as carrying the synoptic questions and as assessing conceptual and theoretical understanding of experimental methods. Useful practice for it is full written attempts marked against a mark scheme rather than rapid topic-checking.
No. Appendix 3 of the specification gives the Advanced GCE subject code as 9CH0 and states that the paper codes 'are provided for reference purposes' and that 'Students do not need to be entered for individual papers'. The codes 9CH0/01, 9CH0/02 and 9CH0/03, along with the Science Practical Endorsement code 9CH0/04, label components of a single entry rather than four separate ones. One further qualification is worth ruling out: Pearson's Edexcel International Advanced Level in Chemistry (2018) is a different qualification with its own structure.
Our expert A-level chemistry tutors help Year 13 students work to Edexcel 9CH0 itself — the topics each paper names, the kinetics mathematics Pearson flags as A-level only, and the Data Booklet a candidate is handed in the exam.
Rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, with 91% of our students achieving their desired grades. See also the Edexcel A-Level Chemistry page and our A-Level Chemistry board comparison.
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