Scottish Nationals and Highers 2024: Boundaries and marking explained ahead of results day tomorrow

• Scottish students who sat their Nationals or Highers will receive their results on Tuesday.
• There are four passing grades, but you can request more details about how you did.
• The exact grade boundaries for 2024 will also be released on Tuesday.
• Each paper has undergone a thorough marking process, although you can still appeal your grade.

Scottish students will soon be able to breathe a sigh of relief - for better or worse, their exam results are nearly here.

High and secondary schoolers who sat their ‘Nationals’ - or their National 5 exams - and ‘Highers’ over the summer are poised to finally find out how they did, with the Scottish Qualification Authority’s (SQA) results day falling on Tuesday, 6 August this year. Those who signed up to MySQA early may be texted or emailed their final grades from as early as 8am, while everyone else should get them in the post throughout the day.

But which grades constitute a pass, and how can you go about finding out what the grade boundaries were for each subject this year? Here’s everything you need to know:

What do the different grades mean?

Scotland’s Nationals and Highers candidates will receive letter grades for each subject they sat a final exam for. The marking system differs somewhat from the English, Welsh, and Northern Irish equivalents, with GCSEs - roughly equivalent to National 5 exams - being graded on a numerical scale, while A Levels - which loosely correspond to Highers - receive letter grades too, but from a rather different system.

In Scotland, the letter grades go from A to D, with A being the highest score and D the lowest. But these are all passing grades, meaning that even if you see a D grade, you have still been awarded that course.

The higher letter grades, A through C, are actually split into two bands, although this information is not generally included on your certificate. If you’d like to find out whether you scored an upper or a lower A, B, or C grade, you’ll usually need to request the information from your school - which may not be able to tell you until the new school year begins. For students moving on to tertiary study or the workforce, you can also request it directly from SQA online here.

If you don’t manage to score enough for a D grade you will see ‘No Award’ next to that subject. Unfortunately, this means you have not achieved that particular National or Higher this time around.

How to find out what 2024’s grade boundaries were

Each year, SQA sets slightly different grade boundaries - or the amount of marks needed to achieve each letter grade - for each subject. These are set, in part, based on how students across the country fared in the exam, to help account for that year’s exam difficulty level, and to keep the qualifications consistent year-on-year.

The exact grade boundaries for 2024 will be released on results day too. They will be published, usually in a spreadsheet format, on SQA’s grade boundaries online page here.

They are expected to be fairly similar to last year’s for many subjects. An A grade in most subjects involved scoring at least 70% in 2023, while a B was usually around 60% or up, a C around 50%, and a D around 40% - although this can sometimes drop down even lower depending on the grade boundaries set.

How was my exam marked?

After exams wrapped up in May, papers were securely packaged up and sent off to thousands of expert markers around Scotland. SQA checks they have all arrived before marking begins.

These markers will have received special training before they are asked to grade exams. They will calculate how many marks candidates have achieved out of the total number possible. SQA will also carry out quality assurance tests across all different subjects and levels. This will often involve senior appointees reviewing a random selection of papers, to make sure they have been marked fairly and consistently.

Once all of the marking is complete, SQA will hold a series of meetings to determine what the grade boundaries should be set as that particular year. When they decide, their records will be updated - converting each student’s marks out of the total into the letter grade the candidate will eventually receive.

There will also be spot checks to ensure these are accurate, but if you think there has been a problem with your grade, all Scottish students have the right to appeal it for free.

We have written a series of explainers to help young people navigating results day. For more information about what Scottish students can expect on results day, check out this one. If you’d like to find out more about how to appeal your grades with SQA, you can try this one.