Why Advanced Highers are harder than A-levels

My school did Access/Int 1/Int 2 instead of standard grade...

As mentioned above, a big hurdle in advanced highers is getting the support to sit them. At a school like mine back when I sat them, they were an optional extra that many departments chose not to teach, or at best ran a course if they had sufficient demand. Unlike A-Levels where anyone serious about university takes them, a student with good higher grades will usually not have anything riding on it- they'll be into university already in most cases. It really screws up the motivation if you know that not getting AAA (or not getting anything) means nothing to your future career plans.

170,000 people sat highers last year, just 20,000 sat advanced highers. Not really surprising to find then that over 95% of Scottish School leavers stay in Scotland when they go to university, is it? I'm always slightly wary of the stat that 10% of people get AAA at A-Level. It's actually more accurate to say 10% of those who sat three or more A-Levels get AAA or better. Some sit four or five and get AAAB or whatever, some only sit two, some leave school before they get to A-Levels. As a percentage of the school going population, its only around 3% of those who start aged five who will end school with straight As having sat 3 A-Levels or more.

personally i think that's more to do with the fact that a lot of the people who are smart enough to get AAA at Adv Higher already have an unconditional to uni and decide yo what's the point.
I know this was the case for myself and many others at school anyway, I was on course for AAA until i got an unconditional then pretty much stopped going to school. If I'd needed the grades I would have probably done it though, as would many of my friends

I went to a Scottish school that offers both highers/adv highers and A-levels. In terms of content and difficulty

Standard grade = GCSE
Higher = AS level
Advanced higher/CSYS = A level

The AS/A2 modular system does make it easier to get top grades just because you can repeat modules any number of times.

I disagree. I got an unconditional in February for the uni I'm going to and still stuck in at school, many people got offers well before then, but there was minimal change in the attainment of the people in my classes from the start of the year when no-one had offers to the end of the year.

This. I had an unconditional at the end of fifth year but wanted to do some advanced highers (maths, physics and chemistry). I got 3 As so if anything I improved from my performance in fifth year. AAABC at Higher and AAA at advanced higher.

If anything, those who should have been motivated did worse than those who weren't.

I'm going back six years now, but at my school (and I don't know how it'd measure up to the schools you went to) it was completely the reverse. Advanced highers only ran in six subjects, and of the two I did, class sizes dropped from around a dozen to about 7 or 8 after the offers came back, and typically a few of us dropped the work level. I stopped going to English altogether, and basically the only reason I went to Chemistry was because it was a good laugh- the wannabe medics/dentists worked away, but for the other four that stuck it, it was a bit of a carry-on, and I gather this was typical of the rest of the classes for most years, certainly mines, my sisters and my friends. In the end, of the 13 that started AH Chem, 8 finished, 5 passed it and I got a C. Those of us who would never have to use it again quickly found the prospect of lab write ups and NAB revision at a weekend when there was a party or the pub was far from appealing.

I'm going back six years now, but at my school (and I don't know how it'd measure up to the schools you went to) it was completely the reverse. Advanced highers only ran in six subjects, and of the two I did, class sizes dropped from around a dozen to about 7 or 8 after the offers came back, and typically a few of us dropped the work level. I stopped going to English altogether, and basically the only reason I went to Chemistry was because it was a good laugh- the wannabe medics/dentists worked away, but for the other four that stuck it, it was a bit of a carry-on, and I gather this was typical of the rest of the classes for most years, certainly mines, my sisters and my friends. In the end, of the 13 that started AH Chem, 8 finished, 5 passed it and I got a C. Those of us who would never have to use it again quickly found the prospect of lab write ups and NAB revision at a weekend when there was a party or the pub was far from appealing.

I know this is a bit late

I think Adv. Highers are more difficult because they tend to mirror 1st year at Univeristy.

I am currently sitting 2 Advanced Highers (French and German) and they are really difficult. I got AA at Higher for them but at present I am sitting on a BD . Teaching is definitly a big problem. I get just 4hours of French a week and just 3hours of German, which also means I get dumped with huge amounts of course work and folio work but one point my teachers make is "At UNI you're expected to work more independently and this is preparing you for that" etc .

It would be interesting if you could sit A-levels and Adv. Highers at the same time, like Adv. Higher French but A-level German and see what is easier. I know if I received a unconditional from Glasgow or Edinburgh, German would be out the window, but I would still try with French because I want a career based around it...so it would be beneficial .

A-Levels are equivalent to Scottish Highers (maybe slightly harder). There is no English equivalent to Advanced Higher.

Pretty much disagree, and you just resurrected a thread which had a last post at the beginning of January...

Sorry, saw this post in a google search result, didn't see the dates. And, according to my AH Computing teacher, GCSE = Intermediate 1 & 2 and A-Level = Higher. Advanced Higher is above all English secondary school qualifications and require far more effort and work. For my computing project, I had to write a 500 word project proposal, plus I will have to spend at least 30 hours programming, 10 hours testing my program and I'll have to write a report/evaluation which is about 1000 words long. That's more work than some universities require. The whole thing is only worth 80 marks with the exam+coursework out of 200.

It also requires a lot of learning for not many marks. I had to learn hexadecimal and my teacher spent 2 hours teaching me it. I've looked through past papers sing 2005 and have found a single 1 mark question on it. Intermediate 2 Engineering gives 4 marks for hexadecimal and isn't even a computing subject.