I'm unsure as to what specific changes in the syllabus made it
harder/easier, but I do know that flipping through the TYS for
papers 2003 to 2008 shows a different pattern of questions
that are getting easier in the theoratical sense, but much
tougher in the practical sense.
I'll see if I haven't thrown away my TYS yet ... need to dig it
out if it's still around.
That is because they kept the easier topics and threw out the
harder ones. Hence you only see the easy questions ( these are the
easier topics remember?). Where are all the relative velocity,
AP/GP, permutation and combination question?
And even in these chicken feed topics, they further lowered the
requirements. An example would be your calculus area questions. Now
they don't even expect you to find the area between 2 curves. Only
between a line and a curve. Plus don't even have do with respect to
y-axis blah blah blah. And your calculus is simplifed too. No
implicit diffierention, no indirect rate of change, no parametric,
no small changes etc etc. All the questions which involved these
additional stuff were also taken out from the TYS.
And sketching of graphs is chicken feed now too. You don't have
to sketch even simple 12 years old cubic curves like
y=x^3-2x^2+5x-7 for example.
Of coz the questions in the TYS look easy. They are in recent
years and at the same time, missing parts which were the real parts
of the questions asked.
That said, the syllabus change is good because all the easier
stuffs are at O level and the harder stuff moved to A level and
they removed stuff no long essential due to technological changes.
For example, you don't have to use either binomial or calculus to
calculate approximate values anymore since the scientific
calculator is widespread and cheap... eliminating the possibility
you need to estimate the value (81.2)^0.5 to 3 dp.