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It's difficult to compare A-levels with highers. AAA at AH is equivalent to A*A*A* on the basis that one cannot go higher than an A at AH and an A* at A-level. AH is meant to be roughly equivalent to a full A-level, although I would imagine A-levels are more in depth as Scottish students typically study more highers, in a wider range of subjects, then A-level ones do. Highers might be more similar to the IB than A-levels in this regard.

It's also worth noting that a lot of Scottish schools do not (or did not when I was still in school) have particularly good provision for AHs. This was likely because Scottish degrees are designed to begin from where highers finish, making AHs somewhat superfluous unless you wanted to go straight into second year (AHs are roughly equal to first year at Scottish universities) or an English university. In terms of grades, I do recall seeing statistics that something like 3-4 times as many A-level students achieved AAA (this was before the A* was introduced) than higher students achieved AAAAA. This wasn't always particularly well understood south of the border, as I remember seeing situations where mid-level English universities were asking for the same AH grades as Cambridge (who were probably much more aware of the Scottish education system).

I'm not particularly clued up on how the funding system works at Scottish universities, but my understanding is that is funding is provided for a number of places for Scottish students, and that there is separate funding for rUK places, meaning that they are not competing for places. Therefore, some Scottish universities that are not particularly popular with A-level applicants have entry requirements which are probably less difficult to achieve than for a applicant with highers - and possibly the vice versa too.

My uncle got an offer for 3D's from Oxford in the 80s

Oxford was that easy to get in back then? Ah now I get it why so many of our dumb politicians managed to go to Oxford, they never were clever

Yes, and I just realised I misunderstood your comps comment - I thought you meant the comps were nearly as good as private schools in the '90s. Yeah they weren't, and the gap has widened indeed. So all the chat about grade inflation is actually almost entirely driven from pupils at private/selective schools. Interesting... and not something I'd been aware of previously

Oxford was that easy to get in back then? Ah now I get it why so many of our dumb politicians managed to go to Oxford, they never were clever

I think you are misreading the data. I've charted it:



Independent schools have been consistently ahead of Comps. With selective schools (i.e. grammars) close to the private schools. Not much growth at all from the maintained sector