Can anyone tell me how nat 5s are graded?

[Wupity]

Are they given 1, 2, 3 etc or A, B, C ? And what percentage is required for each? I tried to google but couldn’t find a definite answer

It's not an exact science as the grade banding move each sitting depending on subject and results each year. It's A, B, C etc but there is a banding that sits behind that too.

In general it's over 50% for a C.

www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/files_ccc/grade-boundaries-2023.xlsx

This should help.

The grade boundaries vary slightly from year to year and between subjects. It’s done so that similar proportion of pupils pass each year/get an A etc Grade boundaries for each subject are on SQA website.

Thanks that is very helpful

Its incorrect that its 50% to get a C because if you look at Grade Boundaries, sometimes the lowest mark to get a C is actually lower than half the marks available. It does vary from subject to subject, year to year though.

If you look up the SQA course report for a subject it will tell you the grade boundaries in the previous session. For example, the subject I teach had a more challenging paper, therefore they reduced the grade boundaries down by a few percent.

Nominally, it is as follows:
A-70%
B-60%
C-50%
D-40%
no award -<39%

Thanks- what does Upper A boundary mean? Is Upper A a distinct grade?

Yes and no.

Its not on the pupils certificates, but schools get that information.

We actually don’t get letter grades at all - we get numbers. So 1 and 2 are A’s, 3 and 4 are B’s and so on.

Almost like standard grades!

Thanks @SamAndEIIa .

So the pupils just see A, B, C etc and teachers see 1, 2, 3, 4 etc?

Correct!

Schools will have a policy on whether to share this or not.

We also get marks for each “component” (for example, if there are multiple papers for the one subject, or if they have an assignment - which they will, as of this year) and we get their actual scores.

To be honest, I wouldn’t want my child getting this level of information about their own exam though - knowing you are one mark off a grade is … not nice.

So, for example, we get something that looks like this:

Joe bloggs - paper 1 - 70/100
Paper 2 - 20/20
assignment 16/20
band 2

Its obviously more complex than that but that’s the gist of it.

Pupils must be given this information if they ask though. Asking for it is a subject access request (you don’t need to state those words for it to be one).

From feedback from local teachers, it seems a large proportion of this year’s appeals were from those who missed out on a grade by one mark. To be honest, we would have appealed in that situation too - not because the mark seemed wrong but because if it only took one mark to change a grade then it only took one small error too. It is also unsurprising that none of these got that extra mark.

I’m aware that a pupil must be given it if asked. In some schools I’m free to give that information myself, in others I have to sent the pupil to my departmental head to get the information. This year I had a few enquire about getting component marks in my n5 class, however they decided not to. N5 results are largely meaningless if a child plans to stay on and do a higher in your subject anyway.

In my subject, everyone who is on a boundary was automatically remarked before the pupils got their grades back. Im
not sure if that applies to all subjects but it certainly does in mine.

I didn’t present any appeals this year. In fact, I can only remember presenting a handful of appeals, ever.