President of the Mathematical Association of NSW,Karen McDaid,said maths teachers were"running blind"before the exams as they adapted to the new syllabuses.

The NSW Education Standards Authority began its lengthy andcontested process to renew its three calculus-based courses (advanced mathematics,extension 1 and extension 2) in 2016,to include greater focus on real-world applications and university maths.

"A lot of work went into advising and working with NESA to make sure they were as clear as they possibly could be,"Ms McDaid said."The teachers have worked really hard to incorporate this new content,particularly this year."

Extension 2 students say they have largely enjoyed the course,even though teachers were figuring out course delivery on the go and there was an absence of usual past papers.

"The course content itself has definitely become easier in certain areas while still maintaining a strong level of mathematics,"said student Patrick O'Connor."[It's] even more effective as the topics are directly aimed at university level mathematics in contrast to the previous course."

Changes have also been made to the advanced and extension 1 courses. Statistics have been introduced as a topic in both,to meet the growing need for data skills in workplaces.

The intermediate-level advanced mathematics course also teaches financial mathematics.

Those topics will form part of the new"common content"marking scale between advanced mathematics and standard mathematics,the non-calculus course,to allow for a better comparison of student performance across the two subjects.

It followsyears of concern that students were advantaged bychoosing the easier maths course to boost their ATAR.

NESA will provide the Universities Admissions Centre with data related to the common content questions for scaling purposes,and hopes the measure will encourage students to take the mathematics course that most suits their ability.

Ms McDaid said teachers were expecting 20 to 25 marks worth of common content in both exams. But she said it wouldn't be until January,when a breakdown of HSC marks became available,that teachers would be able to see how students fared with the new content.