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How does the scottish system work?

I've never quite understood it, how many highers do you take and how many advanced highers do you take? Are highers the equivalent of AS's and advanced highers like A2's? are there any compulsory subjects?

Reply 1

Steph!

ummm I'm not scottish, I've just picked this up from friends so I'm prob wrong

advanced highers are not compulsory..... they are like the first yr of uni I think....?
they do about the same number of highers as we do A levels.. just a year less
no compulsory subjects

Reply 2

JennLlama

spoon1

A simplified version of the Scottish education system...
People normally do 5 Highers in their penultimate year of school (S5 - equivalent to year 12). They are similar to AS levels but generally regarded as being of a higher standard, and are the 'expected' qualification for Scots to leave school with (though Advanced Highers are also fairly common). They also consist of totally separate units to the Advanced Highers, unlike AS levels which are more like half an A2. Scottish Universities generally require only Highers for entry to University.
Advanced Highers are like A2s - same standard (allegedly!) and are accepted for entrance to English Universities in place of A2s. Some Scottish Universities will allow students with Advanced Highers to skip to the second year of their course (though this is not especially common). Advanced Highers are roughly a similar standard to the first year of University study *in Scotland*, not in England.
In their final year of school (S6 - equivalent to year 13) people can take Advanced Highers (as far as I'm aware nobody has ever done more than 5 and 3 is more usual) or more Highers, or a combination of both.
In addition to these qualifications there are also things called 'Intermediate 1's and 'Intermediate 2's, but now we're getting complicated so I'll leave them out!
At Higher (and Advanced Higher), there are no compulsory subjects however some schools impose their own rules and insist, for example, that pupils do Higher English (like mine did!). Most people are old enough to leave school (i.e. over 16) in the year they sit their Highers, though some are old enough earlier, so some people leave at the end of their Higher year.
Hope that helps a little! Sorry it's not too clear. Any more questions, feel free to ask.
Jenn xx

Reply 3

Acaila

Ok, in Scotland you do 6 years at high school, the first two of which are following a general curriculum in basically all the subjects.
In S3 and 4 (Secondary 3 and 4, or your third and fourth year at high school), you take 8 Standard Grades. This can vary between schools, but in most cases you must take English, Maths, a language and a science (or general science), then other subjects tend to be grouped e.g. social subjects, creative and aesthetic subjects, etc. There are three levels in Standard Grades: Foundation (lowest), General and Credit (highest). Everybody sitting a standard grade sits at General level, and then either Foundation or Credit depending on how good at the subject they are. Grading is from 1 to 7, 1 and 2 being a Credit grade, 3 and 4 General, 5 and 6 Foundation, and 7 being a fail.
In S5, you take 5 subjects. English is compulsory pretty much everywhere, and Maths is strongly encouraged (they also put few other subjects in the same column so you don't have much choice but to take it). You can choose the level that you study a subject at, ranging usually from Intermediate 1 (which is approx Standard Grade General Level), Intermediate 2 (same as Credit) to Highers. Highers are slightly less in depth than A Levels because they are only one year courses, but 5 Highers are considered equal to 3 A Levels (5 As at Higher get the same UCAS points as 3 As at A level, standard offers for Scottish unis work out the same, etc.). Highers are the important qualification in Scotland, and they are also what universities make offers on almost exclusively.
S6 is basically the same as S5, but sixth years aren't forced to take five subjects in most cases. Normally you are allowed to take only four and have the rest of your time for free study. S6s can also choose to study Advanced Highers, which as steph_247 said are not compulsory and are often similar to the first year of university work. This does however vary greatly from subject to subject, but with one or two Advanced Highers at B or above, unis will sometimes offer direct entry into the second year of a course. Advanced Highers don't tend to be a regular thing however. They have only been a feature of the education system for four years approx (there was previously the CSYS qualification - Certificate of Sixth Year Studies), and as I mentioned Highers are the most important qualifications so most people take little or no Advanced Highers. Generally speaking, three is all most schools will allow you to study, as they say you should have a spare subject column for every column taken up with an Advanced Higher to reflect the workload, but as this forum shows, there are some intelligent idiots who disregard that :biggrin:

. In Advanced Highers, projects and dissertations tend to be a feature of many of the courses, meaning less of your grade is on the final exam, wheras at Higher it's common for 100% of your grade to rest on one paper.

Hope this helps :smile:

Reply 4

WhatFreshHell?

The principle difference between the English system and the Scottish system as I see it is that in England examinations are cumulative, i.e. you sit the AS level to go on to the A2 level, and your grade is worked out from the two levels. In Scotland, Highers only allow entry into Advanced Higher courses (almost always, you can sometimes crash an AH but only if you're very bright and have a background in the subject).

Also, some of the differences between Advanced Higher & A2s are quite subtle.
Advanced Highers, as Acaila mentioned, are very new examinations, they've only been around for four years and they have changed almost every year since they came around (i.e. the format of the exam, the types of questions asked, etc.)

Also, very few people actually do Advanced Highers (only really out of academic curiosity or if you're applying to an english uni, for instance the biggest AH english class in the country last year was I believe 12, and you don't get more than one class per school), and they're essentially worthless to all but a few people. This all means that
(a) very little teaching is allocated to AHs; very often it's just a few people at the back of the Higher class and maybe 2-3 taught periods, and
(b) teachers aren't particularly bothered about how people do: it doesn't feature on league tables or anything like that, nobody needs it, etc.

Compare this with the A-Level, which is the 'base currency' of the English education system. Teaching focuses on the final year at school, teachers often have a lot of experience in teaching the A2, and they know the 'patterns' and 'success strategies'.

Advanced Highers are not much harder in terms of academia than A2s, I don't believe. However, it is recognised widely that it's harder to achieve the same grade in an Advanced Higher as with an A2. Cambridge University says:

Experience of College Admissions Tutors and CAO staff attending the Scottish Oxbridge Conference suggests that AAA at Scottish Advanced Highers is a harder to achieve than AAA at A level. It is recommended that offers be AAB.

(source:http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/admissions/athandbook/section10/10_1.html#1)

Reply 5

Acaila

Oh incidentally, there aren't revision books for AHs, and past papers only exist in 5 subjects (sciences, English and maths) compared to the huge amount of literature available for A Level students.
WFH? is perfectly right. Teachers don't bother about AHs. In one Advanced Higher this year I got absolutely no teaching whatsoever, and in another, the teacher didn't know how much the exam was worth of our grade. I think they invented them to shut up we mischievous sixth years :rolleyes:

Reply 6

WhatFreshHell?

Similarly for myself, when I did History I only had one period a week contact time with a teacher, in French my teacher has been off since November (!!), English only half the class show up (that means six people, btw) because no-one knows of the teacher will be in...
Compare that with a sixth form college in England, which exists to get people the best grades at A-Level.

Reply 7

Acaila

Meh, sometimes you gotta wish you studied in England...(I still think AHs aside we have the better system though)
Less people get As up here as well, right?

Reply 8

JennLlama

Acaila

Meh, sometimes you gotta wish you studied in England...(I still think AHs aside we have the better system though)
Less people get As up here as well, right?

I'd disagree - I think the content of the AHs is much better than that of A-levels. I appreciate it's difficult when there aren't really past papers (the year I sat mine no past papers whatsoever were available - the school didn't even have a supply!) and I guess it would be difficult with teachers who don't care but I think once they've settled in and teachers are more comfortable with them the system will be far better than the A-level one. Admittedly I've never had an 'English' education (though I've been teaching in an English school recently) but there's nothing I know of which would make me prefer it to the Scottish one.
And yes, I believe A's are less common in Scotland, which is nice cos it helps distinguish between the top students :smile:

at least in my humble opinion.
Jenn xx

Reply 9

Acaila

The only thing I meant that I preferred was that AHs are so damn hard :wink:

Wasn't actually saying I liked the A-level system heaven forbid! :biggrin:

Reply 10

JennLlama

Acaila

The only thing I meant that I preferred was that AHs are so damn hard :wink:

Wasn't actually saying I liked the A-level system heaven forbid! :biggrin:

Ah I see! My apologies!
Jenn xx

Reply 11

Acaila

Quite alright :biggrin:

I'm a educational patriot, don't worry :wink:

Reply 12

Jenni_Kitten

JennLlama

I'd disagree - I think the content of the AHs is much better than that of A-levels.

What's the content like?? :smile:

Reply 13

Acaila

Depends on the Advanced Higher obviously :biggrin:

Reply 14

Jenni_Kitten

Well yeah, but don't see how the content of ALL of them can be better than ALL A levels, unless there are general features e.g. amount to learn, diversity etc. that make them better :smile:

Reply 15

JennLlama

Jenni_Kitten

What's the content like?? :smile:

As Acalia said, it depends on the AH in question. I made that statement based on the fact that in my University studies I have come across quite a lot of things which I had learned at AH but which my English counterparts had not done at A-level (I did AH maths, applied maths, physics and computing). Now I assume they must have learned other things which I haven't done (though I haven't found out what yet...!) but I just feel that the content of the AHs I did prepared me better for what I'm now doing than the content of the equivalent A-levels would have. Of course, I might be wrong and you just have to learn more for AHs, though this strikes me as unlikely!
I realise my statement was very general - I can't compare, for example, AH history to A-level history as I have absolutely no experience of either. I meant just that of the subjects that I know of, I would have chosen AHs over A-levels because the content better prepared me for what I'm doing now. (And for a whole bunch of other reasons, but that's not the point!).
Jenn xx

Reply 16

Wee Dave

In answer to the original questions

The scottish system works well, ok i llie it works exceptionally well what with the excellant SQA and well designed system

Much better than our unlucky friends south of the border