So are you saying students should read university textbooks before they can do an HSC exam? That doesn't seem fair.
well unlike previous syllabus, current syllabus was written when there is internet.
this and many other such books are available as ebook and with kids online 24/7 thesedays it's not like they don't have access to this information, a very different scenario to 50 years ago.
there have been many complaints from teachers about the oosiness of Q8 recently, but in the context of 24/7 online access to information not widely available 50 years ago, these teachers seem to have their head in the sand.
the syllabus says "
solve problems involving complex numbers in a variety of forms"
so the Q8 is one such problem.
syllabus does not specify from whence the "variety of forms" comes from, maybe from syllabus documents, textbooks, past papers, but could also include forms from internet sources such as the Lang ebook referenced earlier, and so in this context the Q8 is not beyond the scope of the syllabus
any teacher worth their salt would have covered this material, and if they didn't they and their students would have to question their suitability for teaching
complaining about oosiness from a perspective from 50 years ago isn't going to cut the mustard