Standard Grade

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Standard Grades are Scotland's educational qualifications for students aged around 15-16 years. Standard Grade courses are taken over the 3rd and 4th years of a student's secondary schooling. Exams are taken at the end of the 4th Year (around May), with preliminary examinations taken several months earlier (usually in January or February).

Students will typically study 7 or 8 subjects at Standard Grade. Generally speaking, different subjects can be taken independently of each other. The two main restrictions on this choice are timetable arrangements, and the fact that many less popular subjects are not offered by all schools.

The Standard Grade is broadly equivalent to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) qualification taken in other parts of the UK.

1 Levels of Award
2 History and Future
3 See also
4 External links

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Levels of Award

There are three sub-levels at which Standard Grade exams can be taken, namely "Foundation Level", "General Level" and "Credit Level". At one sitting, students generally sit either the Foundation and General level papers together, or the General and Credit level papers together.

Students are awarded a numerical grade for each examination (which may consist of several papers) ranging from 1 (best) to 7 (worst). 1 and 2 correspond to Credit Level, 3 and 4 to General Level, 5 and 6 to Foundation Level, and 7 to "course completed" (effectively the same as a fail).

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History and Future

The Standard Grade replaced the old O-Grade qualification, and was phased in from the late-1980s until the early-1990s.

The Standard Grade system is now being slowly phased out in favour of the SQA's Higher Still system, as many, students and teachers alike, feel that the jump from Standard Grade to Higher is too difficult, particularly in subjects such as English. Although they are not exactly the same, the Foundation Level is similar to Higher Still's Access 3 level, whilst General is similar to Intermediate 1 and Credit is similar to Intermediate 2. In some schools which use Higher Still qualifications as replacements for Standard Grades, students are now required to take an exam at the end of 3rd year (either Access 3 or Intermediate 1), and then take the Intermediate 1 or 2 exam (depending on which exam they took in 3rd year) at the end of their 4th year. This allows them to then go onto Intermediate 2 or Higher level in 5th year, as students already do each year.

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