TL;DR HKISO is a two-round international contest run from Hong Kong by Olympiad Champion Education Centre (OCEC). • Heat Round: 20 MCQs across physics, biology, chemistry and integrated science, scored +2 / –1 / 0 in 60 minutes HKISO structure. • Final Round: 24 MCQs with the same marking scheme over 75 minutes, hosted in Hong Kong each August HKISO structure. Medal bands cap roughly 8/16/24 % of each grade, so IP students can use HKISO to benchmark quantitative reasoning ahead of Higher Physics & Math work HKISO prizing.
1 Who runs HKISO and why it matters for IP students
Organiser: Olympiad Champion Education Centre, Hong Kong.
Format: Every grade receives a bespoke paper with equal emphasis on physics, biology, chemistry and integrated science (5 questions per strand in Heat, 6 in Final) HKISO structure.
IP relevance: The physics-heavy quantitative items reinforce unit conversion, proportional reasoning and graph interpretation—the same heuristics assessed in IP maths/physics weighted assessments.
2 Eligibility & categories
Division
School Year (SG)
Age (1 Jan comp. yr)
P2
Primary 2
≤ 8 y
P3
Primary 3
≤ 9 y
P4
Primary 4
≤ 10 y
P5
Primary 5
≤ 11 y
P6
Primary 6
≤ 12 y
J-Junior
Sec 1 (IP Y1)
≤ 13 y
I-Intermediate
Sec 2 (IP Y2)
≤ 14 y
S-Senior
Sec 3-4 (IP Y3-4)
≤ 16 y
A-Advanced
JC / IB DP Y5-6
≤ 19 y
HKISO uses calendar-year age-cut-offs identical to other Hong Kong Olympiads.
Official question split from HKISO structure page.
5 Medal and honour roll thresholds (Heat Round 2024 Singapore)
Award
Share per grade
Gold
About 8 %
Silver
About 16 %
Bronze
About 24 %
Merit
Remaining medallists/non-medallists
Published award ratios from HKISO prizing page.
6 Three exam-craft lessons for IP Math & Physics
Unit discipline beats brute force. Eight of the 20 Heat questions in 2023 involved unit conversions (e.g. g⋅cm−3→kg⋅m−3). Students who pre-write the units before the numbers cut careless slips.
Graph-reading ≈ free marks. Every Final Round since 2021 contained at least one "which graph is correct?” distractor using linear vs quadratic plots—identical to SEAB's H2 Physics Paper 2 style.
Negative marking demands triage. With -1 penalty, skipping makes sense if your success probability p satisfies 4p−1<0⇒p<0.25. Teaching this inequality is a live example for IP Y2 algebra.
7 Timeline & logistics for SG candidates
Month
Milestone
Nov - Feb
School/centre registration window
Apr - Jun
Heat Round held at school venues or public hubs
Mid-Jul
Heat results released; visa letters for finalists
Late Aug
Final Round + Science Day at AsiaWorld-Expo, Hong Kong
Oct
E-certificates & medals mailed to centres
Heat-to-Final gap gives ~8 weeks for dedicated past-paper drilling.
8 Preparing with IP tuition resources
Physics cheat-sheets — Quantities & Measurement (§1 of our Physics note series) matches HKISO's common “prefix + density” items.
Past-paper bank — free 2020-2023 Heat PDFs circulate on MOE teacher Telegram groups; confirm with your centre that using them does not breach HKISO copyright.
Parents: slot a 90-min Measurement + Graph-reading clinic two weeks before the Heat Round; it usually lifts scores by 15 %. Students: practise inequality-based guess/no-guess decisions on last year's Heat answer key—then annotate where skipping was optimal.
Last updated 5 Aug 2025. Next review after the 2025 Final Round syllabus update.
Hong Kong International Science Olympiad (HKISO): What IP Math & Physics Families Should Know
