New Grading System

Starting in the 2024-2025 school year, SSIS has made a significant change to its educational curriculum: its grading system. Up until the previous school year, all grades— regardless of course or grade level— were submitted into students’ gradebooks based on a thirteen-point scale ranging from A+ to F. However, this year a new approach to the allocation of grading and reporting has been incorporated into SSIS’ education system. With this new system, methods of grading vary based on if the student is taking an AP, IB, or SSIS course. 

In terms of AP courses, contrary to the thirteen-point scale from previous years, AP students now see their scores on a four-point scale: beginning, developing, meeting, and meeting with excellence. In the gradebook, these standards appear as scores of D+, C+, A-, and A+, respectively. 

Furthermore, IB courses now follow the official grading system used by authorized IB examiners: the seven-point scale ranging from one to seven. For reference, a seven is equivalent to an A+ in the gradebook; with each IB grade below a seven, the gradebook score falls by two grades in terms of last year’s thirteen-point scale (a six is an A-, a five is a B, and so on).

Finally, for SSIS courses, do they follow the AP grading system?

With such a novel and sudden shift, there has been frequent discussion and expression of personal opinion from both students and teachers surrounding this new method of reporting academic scores.

A general consensus of unfamiliarity among AP students was the distinction between individual standards on singular assessments. According to an anonymous student, “several different standards are tested in one test. For example, there could be multiple MCQs on a test with each corresponding to a certain standard. Therefore, even if you only get a few questions incorrect in terms of your raw score, if they all correspond to the same standard you get a significantly low grade for that particular standard.”