Scottish Students do you prefer Highers/Nat5 to GCSE/A-Level?

As a Scottish Student I am very glad we have Highers and not A-Levels/GCSE as they seem so much harder than our Highers. Im interested to know what other Scottish students think and if any English students wish they were doing Highers or are glad they are doing GCSE/A-Level?

Reply 1

fionaapple

10

I really enjoyed my national 5’s since they were just 1 year courses unlike the gsces which are done over 2 years. However with highers I don’t enjoy them, feel like they aren’t great if you wanna go to a uni somewhere other than scotland, you have to take a variety of subjects like 5-6 whereas which A-levels they usually just only have 3 which means you will develop more in-depth knowledge plus 10x the resources haha

Reply 2

FrogTesseract

OP

11

Original post by fionaapple

I really enjoyed my national 5’s since they were just 1 year courses unlike the gsces which are done over 2 years. However with highers I don’t enjoy them, feel like they aren’t great if you wanna go to a uni somewhere other than scotland, you have to take a variety of subjects like 5-6 whereas which A-levels they usually just only have 3 which means you will develop more in-depth knowledge plus 10x the resources haha

haha, definately get what you mean about the resources. Personally I preferred Highers as well as Nat 5 while its not as in-depth its a year earlier and allows for a lovely sixth year where we can do first year uni level qualifications with no pressure (or leave for a head start). Never thought about how Highers fared elsewhere in the world, I guess not much emphasis is on that seen as most people go to uni in Scotland

Reply 3

BlackLab

15

They are not comparable for "difficulty" as they are very different in terms in length, depth and age studied.

Personally I prefer the Scottish system where breadth is kept for longer and you can keep your options open if you change your mind what uni course you are going to do. Then you can go down to 3 AH in S6 if you want the depth and to be competitive for unis outside of Scotland.

Never had problems finding resources beyond the resources schools already provide/my own class notes for any of the subjects I took at NAT5 or Higher - HTP, Leckie, BrightRed, TeeJay, numerous websites, Scholar, youtube, SQA past papers, SQA understanding standards etc etc. How many resources do you have time to read during a 1 year course????

Reply 4

FrogTesseract

OP

11

Original post by BlackLab

They are not comparable for "difficulty" as they are very different in terms in length, depth and age studied.

Personally I prefer the Scottish system where breadth is kept for longer and you can keep your options open if you change your mind what uni course you are going to do. Then you can go down to 3 AH in S6 if you want the depth and to be competitive for unis outside of Scotland.

Never had problems finding resources beyond the resources schools already provide/my own class notes for any of the subjects I took at NAT5 or Higher - HTP, Leckie, BrightRed, TeeJay, numerous websites, Scholar, youtube, SQA past papers, SQA understanding standards etc etc. How many resources do you have time to read during a 1 year course????

For many mainstream subjects its not normally an issue but subjects such as cybersecurity, mechanics and technical subjects etc can be a pain to find resources for. Its not necessarily a hindrance just a point to be made.

Reply 5

emkelt

12

i wish we had a further maths that was pretty standardised— english unis don’t really seem to realise that mechanics/statistics isn’t taught at many (especially state) schools