Are 6 th year Studies in Scotland the same as A levels in England?

[mankyscotslass]

I've always wondered....

I was always told no. But content wise I would say they sounded the same - just my opinion though.

All the A level kids got to jump into 2nd year at uni but the SYS lot had to sit through first year. A Level traditionally used to cover first year uni subjects. I think that's why Scottish courses are 4 years.

Interestingly though the English lot have copied our Higher system by bringing in the AS Level

SYS are scrapped now anyway I think. It's the Advanced Higher instead. Scottish systm still better than English anyway

showing my age sat mine in 88, kind of lost touch with the scottish system since i moved . Thanks!!

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They're not 'the same'. Probably more on a par but I don't know what A levels are like.

I have never ever heard of of A level kids going into second year at uni, bobsmum. What uni was that? You can go to uni without sitting SYS as long as you've got good Highers.

Pointy, that's true, i did get conditional place before i sat my highers....did not get the grades though

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Pointydog I went to Glasgow University.

It was in my First year Geography class - all the students who had A Level Geography automatically had the option to skip into second year. Not many did tbh.

gosh, never heard of htat but didn't know many sciency people. SO they studied for three years instead of four?

strange isnt it? So whether i had gone after my highers or my sys no difference, but if i had a levels a year less? so what was the point....apart from me being a bit of a geek and happy to do the work....

A level students can get into any uni course in the 2nd year in Scottish universities if they want to AFAIK. My stepchildren did SYSs and got into English unis on the same basis as if they had A levels. People always used to say they were harder than A levels but I dunno...

I would have thought you could have joined the 2nd year with SYSs to be honest, manky (if I may call you that). You certainly can with Advanced Highers, now.

I went to school and uni in Scotland and now teach in a secondary school in England.

You used to do Highers in 5th year (same as year 12) and SYS in 6th year. Usually between 3 and 5 highers in 5th year and then 2 or 3 SYSs and maybe some more highers.
If your SYSs were in the same subjects as you were going to do at uni and your grades were good enough then you could go into 2nd yr (of 4) at a Scottish uni but most people I knew didn't. Most of the English people also went into 1st year and had an easy year along with those who'd done SYSs (I went straight from 5th year with just highers and so actually needed to work in 1st at uni)

Now they do highers and then advanced highers (pretty much the same as SYS) which are equivalent of A2 levels and A levels here. The content won't be exactly the same but then 2 A-level courses offered by 2 exam boards won't have the same content either.

So to answer the original question: 6th yr studies (SYS) are not the same as an A0level but are the equivalent of one.

I got an unconditional for uni on my highers grades but stayed for 6th year cos I thought it would be a bit of a doss before uni. It was. But I got my (not so great) SYS's too after a scivey year.

A lot of my uni year only had Higher geography and so the first year course was all new, but I found it very similar to SYS and so presumably to A Level. Because I'd covered a lot of the course already I got exemptions to get out of my end of year exams. Only SYS and A Level students managed this so they must be comparable. Or I'm a girly swot

Thanks....I just wondered cos trying to explain them to people down here is a bit like hitting my head off a brick wall....

i my arts course, quite a few got first year exam exemptions depdning on course marks and some just had highers. Maybe your course was harder, bob

thanks for your info, debi. Never knew all that

especially when i didnt have a clue myself!!!

I didnt get the grades i needed for uni on my sys either, although i did pass them. maybe if i had gone to uni the answer would have been obvious!

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I spent 6th year studying with my boyfriend. Got very knowledgable about wine and beer and spirits.....shame biology wasnt a requirement for English or history sys....

I had a shite 5th year in a new school, hated the world and pissed off to Belgium as soon as my highers were finished. Yes, Belgium, that's how miserable I was

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I think the only value of my SYSs (English & French, they were) was that they were so unknown in England you could talk about them in uni interviews. [Barrel scraping noise]

Not sure about the French one, but the English one, in a typically Scottish educative way (which I approve of, by the way) was to make them as different as could be from the English A level. So (i) you had to do a dissertation; and (ii) there were three other papers - literature; practical criticism a la Empson; and creative writing - of which you did two. So you could get the SYS without ever having done a literature essay. It was all a bit progressive (for 1979. Am I the Oldest??)

You is older than I, bink.

Belgium was also were I learned to appreciate camel cigarettes, so not all bad I s'pose, pruni

Bink, i have vague memories of a dissertation on Larkin, but no recollection of the rest...as for history, I know i did a disertation on the effect of the treaty of versaille on post war germany and the consequences for the region, including ww2...again no memory of the rest of the exam stuff......really stuck with me!
But i did manage to do a crash o grade in Ancient greek (no not classical studies, did that higher year) >