Are all exams created equal? The data raises questions.
Analysis of this data reveals huge variations in grade distributions between subjects even when they have similar overall pass rates.
Across all Higher courses, the percentage of pupils achieving an A grade varies from 100 percent in traditional Mandarin to just 10.9 percent in Health and Food Technology.
The eight subjects with the highest A grade percentage are all languages, with the lowest proportion achieving top grades being 51.4 percent in French.
In 2025 a total of 25 subjects – including English, Biology, Physics, Physical Education, Art and Design, and Applications of Maths – fewer than one third of passing grades were awarded as an A.
When analysing the top ten most popular Highers (at least in terms of the number of pupils sitting the exam) we see that the chances of a student achieving an A grade vary dramatically from one subject to the next: 23.6 percent of English passes are judged to be an A, whereas the figure for Mathematics is 41.2 percent, despite the fact that the two have almost identical overall pass rates.
These variations in grade distribution are not new, and they can also be seen at National 5 and Higher level. They do, however, raise questions about whether all courses and grades are genuinely comparable, and why students are dramatically more successful in some than in others.
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