Grade (education)

:For meanings of GPA other than Grade point average, see GPA (disambiguation).

Central and Eastern Europe

In Russia, Ukraine, Hungary and likely the rest of the former Soviet Union and countries formerly associated with the Eastern Bloc, a five-point grading scale is used, where:

Related Topics:
Russia - Ukraine - Hungary - Soviet Union - Eastern Bloc

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• 5 (very good or excellent) is the best possible grade,
• 4 (good),
• 3 (satisfactory) indicates "average" performance,
• 2 (unsatisfactory),
• 1 (poor) is the lowest possible grade.

Qualifiers `+' and `–' are often used to add some degree of differentiation between the grades, eg. 4+ is better than 4 but a little worse than 5–. Grading varies greatly from teacher to teacher and tends to be entirely subjective even for courses that lend themselves to objective marking such as mathematics and applied sciences. Even though the grades technically range from 1 to 5, 1 is uncommon and is rarely given for academic reasons—in many cases a failure to show up for an exam or to answer any questions only results in a 2.

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Students in these countries may be labelled by their teachers according to their average grade, the labels stemming from the respective digits. For example, someone with a 5-point average is a пятёрышник (m) (pronounced: pyatyorishnik, from Russian "5", пять (pyat'))/

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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).

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Since mid-90s, Polish primary and secondary schools expanded this system to include 6 as a grade. In this system 5 became equivalent to `very good', and the highest mark 6—`excellent'—is awarded primarily when it is clear that the student knows the material considerably beyond the level taught in the course. In universities, a traditional four-point system is used, the grades are: 2.0 (failed), 3.0 (pass), 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0 (very good, the higest grade). There are some universities that use non-standard, additional 5.5 and 6.0 grades.

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The grading system in Latvia has been changed to a 10-point grading system. 10 is the highest achievable grade, while 1 is awarded for extremely poor performance. The minimal passing grade is 4. The absence of any kind of performance is awarded with 'nv' (nav v?rt?juma - no grade). Teachers in lower classes are encouraged to award one of two grades 'i' (ieskait?ts) for a passing grade and 'ni' (neieskait?ts) when the performance is not acceptable; however, the benefits of this system are questionable.

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