Grade (education) Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
A grade in education can mean either a teacher's evaluation of a student's work or a student's level of educational progress, usually one grade per year (often denoted by an ordinal number, such as the "3rd Grade" or the "12th Grade"). This article is about evaluation of students' work.
In the United States and some other countries, teachers most commonly grade students with a letter from A through D (all inclusive) and F (the grade is generally issued at the end of a "grading" or "marking period" - some systems have six weeks at the elementary school level, and nine weeks at junior high/middle school and high schools. Other systems have nine weeks for elementary and junior high/middle school and six weeks for high school.
At most colleges, two grades are issued per year - one for each semester). E is generally omitted because it once stood for "Excellent" in many localities, particularly in the United States (see the section that follows) and it is also easy to falsify an "F" into an "E" on a handwritten report card, which is the kind usually given out in lower levels of schooling. In some places (e.g. Canada), however, E may be given out as a "conditional pass" or "redeemable fail" grade, requiring the student receiving said grade to only partially repeat the course in which the grade is given (an F mandating complete repetition). The nearer the start of the alphabet, the more positive the grade. In many schools, the system is made more fine-grained by allowing a plus or a minus to be added to each letter. That is, if we take > to indicate "is a more positive grade than", then the grading system can be summarized as follows:
In mathematics and other subjects where test questions are generally objective, contemporary teachers usually compute grades in the following way:
The A-F system
"Equal opportunity" grading
In contemporary practice, the conversion from percent to letter grade is usually made by a correspondence approximately like this:
| percent | letter | points | |
|---|---|---|---|
| excellent | 90-100 | A | 4 |
| good | 80-89 | B | 3 |
| fair | 70-79 | C | 2 |
| poor (but passing) | 60-69 | D | 1 |
| fail | 0-59 | F | 0 |
Note that, in this procedure, one student's grade is independent of his or her classmates'. Thus it would be possible, for example, for everyone in the class to get an A.
In some countries, 50% is the minimum passing standard; therefore A can span 80-100%, B 70-80%, C 60-70%, D 50-60% with F being below 50%.
| Grade | Passing Grade=65% | Passing Grade=70% | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 92-100 | 93-100 (or 94-100) | |
| B | 83-91 | 85-92 (or 86-93) | |
| C | 74-82 | 77-84 (or 78-85) | |
| D | 65-73 | 70-76 (or 70-77) | |
| F | 0-64 | 0-69 |
| Grade | Passing Grade=60% | Passing Grade=65% | Passing Grade=70% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A+ | 97-100 | 98-100 | 99-100 | |
| A | 93-96 | 95-97 | 95-98 (or 96-98) | |
| A− | 90-92 | 92-94 | 93-94 (or 94-95) | |
| B+ | 87-89 | 89-91 | 91-92 (or 92-93) | |
| B | 83-86 | 86-88 | 87-90 (or 88-91) | |
| B− | 80-82 | 83-85 | 85-86 (or 86-87) | |
| C+ | 77-79 | 80-82 | 83-84 (or 84-85) | |
| C | 73-76 | 77-79 | 79-82 (or 80-83) | |
| C− | 70-72 | 74-76 | 77-78 (or 78-79) | |
| D+ | 67-69 | 71-73 | 75-76 (or 76-77) | |
| D | 63-66 | 68-70 | 72-74 (or 72-75) | |
| D− | 60-62 | 65-67 | 70-71 | |
| F | 0-59 | 0-64 | 0-69 |
Sometimes the 60% passing-grade scale omits the "D" grades shown above and becomes a 70% passing-grade minimum, with 0-69 being an F (or occasionally a D); this is most frequently encountered in parochial schools in the United States.
In any of these formats, the "A+" grade can be omitted (this is especially likely to occur if the institution issuing the grade operates under the "grade-point average" system treated later in this article), its range being lumped in with that of the "A" (and the A/A− boundary possibly being adjusted upward as well if this is done) and the "F" grade is sometimes subdivided, most commonly if 70 is observed as the minimum passing grade - one scenario might have 60-69 reckoned as "F+," with 30-59 as "F" and 0-29 being "F−." Often an "F+" (or sometimes "E") grade will require the student to repeat only certain aspects of the course (such as to retake a particular examination) rather than to repeat the course entirely (or may even grant the teacher discretion to pass the student under certain circumstances).
Once in a while each particular grade will be given its own descriptor, such as:
| Grade | Description |
|---|---|
| A+ | Outstanding |
| A | Excellent |
| A− | Commendable |
| B+ | Very Good |
| B | Good |
| B− | Above Average |
| C+ | Average |
| C | Fair |
| C− | Below Average |
| D+ | Needs Improvement |
| D | Poor |
| D− | Very Poor (but passing) |
| F+ | Marginal Fail |
| F | Clear Fail |
| F− | Bad Fail |
Sometimes "Comprehensive Fail" is used in the United Kingdom to describe the worst possible failing grade - and in that country a still lower grade is occasionally seen: Often this is a "G," standing for "Nothing of Merit" or "No Work Submitted."
This is contrast to "grading on a curve", which places students in competition with one another. In its most rigorous application (usually in a classical education setting), grades are parceled out according to a strict bell-shaped curve.
Grading "on a curve"
| grade | percentage |
|---|---|
| A | 7% |
| B | 24% |
| C | 39% |
| D | 24% |
| F | 7% |
Exactly what scores would count for each grade would be determined by the highest score obtained. Note that since the mathematical range of scores does not factor into this calculation, scores receiving an "A" grade can be either numerically very near or numerically very far from the scores receiving an "F" grade.
Note that applying this rigid procedure correctly generally makes for long examinations, so that the results can be statistically significant.
This system tends to foster a large amount of competition among students, and gives a strong incentive to cheat. Additionally, students who score well on tests may not be liked. It may also increase dropping out of school among the students who tend to get lower scores, and who thus face a constant battle to stay out of the "F" group. Due in part to these factors, it would be rare in American public education today to find an instructor who still graded this way. But in Hong Kong, this grading system is employed in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination, the public examinations sits by the fifth form (Grade 11) and Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination, the public examinations sits by the Upper Sixth form (Grade 13).
When considering what a grade means, one should keep in mind which system is being used, or else confusion may result. A number of people are used to taking a "C" to mean "average", for example, but whereas this is indeed the case if the traditional curved grades are used, this will probably not be the case in a non-curved system.
Grade point average (GPA) is a number quantity representing a student's academic performance of a semester, trimester, or school year. The calculation of GPA varies from school to school, but most of the time it is some form of average of the course grades and course credits.
Most high schools and nearly all colleges in the United States have a GPA range between 0 and 4. The letter grade equivalents are:
Occasionally, especially at the college level, a grade even worse than F is reserved for situations in which the student was found to have engaged in academic dishonesty (such as plagiarism); often it is reckoned as "FF" and in some places carries a grade-point value of −1.
Cumulative GPA is the average of the student's GPA since entering the school. For the purposes of university admissions, high school GPAs are sometimes weighted. This typically involves giving additional point value to advanced courses. Weighted GPAs also create GPAs greater than the traditional 4.0 maximum. Different schools have different ways of calculating weighted GPAs. Usually, a weighted grade is worth up to five points, but in some schools it can surpass six points.
At one time (until roughly the mid-20th Century), the most popular grading system in the United States used four letters, which ranked, in descending order:
Some variants exist in this system, including the use of an "O" (for "outstanding") grade, which is even higher than the "E;" and sometimes a "G" (for "good") is placed between the "E" and the "S."
Plus and minus grades are seldom used in this system, and on most of the occasions where they do exist, only the "S" grade may be so modified (with an "S+" and "S−" being available in addition to the base grade of "S").
In Germany, a 6-point grading scale is used, where:
In Russia, Ukraine, and likely the rest of the former Soviet Union, a five-point grading scale is used, where:
In Croatia and likely the rest of the former Yugoslavia, a similar five-point grading scale is used, where:
In France, Belgium and Peru, a 20-point grading scale is used, in which 20 is the best possible grade and 0, the lowest. A score of 20 is considered perfect; accordingly, it is rarely if ever given in courses that are graded subjectively. The "passing" grade is usually 11, and in contrast to the U.S. system, grades of 12 or 13 out of 20 are usually not considered so bad.
In The Netherlands, grades from 1.0 up to 10.0 are used, with 1 being worst and 10 being best. Generally one decimal place is used, and 5.5 and up constitute a pass whereas 5.4 and below constitute a fail. If no decimal places are used, 6 and up is a pass and 5 and below a fail.
Universities in Italy use a 30-point scale simply divided in two, non passing (0 to 17 points), and passing grades (18 to 30 points). Students having a particularly good result can get a "30 e lode" (30 and praise).
In Chile, grades from 1,0 up to 7,0 (with one decimal place) are used, where:
Confusion between the two
Grade point average
Although not universal, some schools add .3 for a "+" grade and subtract .3 for a "−" grade. Thus, a B+ yields a 3.3 whereas an A− yields a 3.7. Most commonly, there is no such thing as an A+, F+ or F− in this system.The E-S-N-U system
This system has largely been replaced by the A-F system dealt with previously, but is still encountered quite often at the elementary school level, particularly in kindergarten and Grades 1 through 3 (this educational level being frequently referred to as primary school). It is also occasionally used at schools for older children, including high schools, in the issuance of "conduct" or "citizenship" grades.Other grading systems
Five and six are both considered to be failing grades, though in earlier years students are not required to repeat classes with '5' grades if they perform well in other classes. In converting German grades to the A-F scale, a 1 = A, ... 4 = D scale is often used (with 5 and 6 both convereted to Fs) but this conversion is not entirely accurate, since, for example, a grade of '2' is considered more difficult to obtain in Germany than a 'B' in the United States.
Students in these countries may be labelled by their teachers according to their average grade, the labels stemming from their respective digits; for example, someone with a 5-point average is a пятёрышник (m) (pronounced: pyatyorishnik, from Russian "5," пять (pyat'))/
пятёрышница (f) (pyatyorishnitsa), while someone with a 1-point average is a еденишник (m) (yedyenishnik, hard to see if you don't know Russian, but from Russian "1," один (adin))/еденишница (f) (yedyenishnitsa).
Teachers in grade schools and high schools are also allowed to record individual exam results with grades such as "3+" or "5-" or "3/4" which indicate varying ambiguities, but final grades at the end of the year need to be one of the basic five. An arithmetic mean is usually calculated, with X.45 being the threshold.
Generally, it's a linear scale, with 1,0 meaning 0% achievement, 4,0 meaning 50% achievement, and 7,0 meaning 100% achievement. Rounding of averages is generally done to the second decimal; hence, a 3,95 is rounded up to a 4,0, whereas a 3,94 is rounded down to a 3,9.