Advanced Higher Statistics grade boundaries 2026: a harder year, higher C and D

Advanced Higher Statistics grade boundaries 2026

Qualifications Scotland, the body that took over from SQA on 1 February 2026, released its Grade boundaries 2026 workbook on 4 August 2026. The minimum marks printed in the 2026 course report are the same.

The course has two question papers, 30 and 90 marks, and no project. The Advanced Higher Statistics guide explains the content.

Boundaries 2026 against 2025

This is the unusual part. The report says Paper 1 was more demanding than expected and Paper 2 was more demanding than expected, and that both were taken into account. Yet the C boundary rose from 56 to 59 and the D boundary from 43 to 47. Since only C, A and upper A are set by hand and B and D are calculated from them, a higher C with an unchanged A pushes B and D up too.

The published facts do not tell us why. What they do show is that the pass rate fell as the boundaries held or rose, so a harder year did not buy cheaper grades.

How to read your mark

1. Say a candidate scores 15 on Paper 1 and 55 on Paper 2, which is 70 out of 120.
2. 70 equals the B boundary, so the grade is a B, with no mark to spare.
3. It is 12 marks short of an A and 11 above the C line.
4. The same 70 in 2025 was a B too, but with 1 mark in hand, since B started at 69.

With C at 59 and A at 82 the calculated boundaries are B = 59 + ⌊(2 × 23 + 1) ÷ 4⌋ = 70 and D = 59 − ⌈(2 × 23 − 1) ÷ 4⌉ = 47.

Advanced Higher Statistics boundaries 2022 to 2026

Since the maximum rose to 120 in 2024, the A boundary has stayed between 82 and 84, but the C boundary has moved between 56 and 60. The C line is the one that shifts.

Entries and results in 2026

There were 187 resulted entries in 2026, against 176 in 2025. The report's figures were prepared before appeals finished.

The A rate dropped from 46.0% to 36.9%, and No Award rose from 15.3% to 20.3%. With under 200 candidates, each one is more than half a percentage point.

What lost marks in 2026

• Conditions and reasons. In Paper 1 question 1(c) most candidates stated the conditions on expected frequencies but not why the data failed them.
• Interval wording. In 1(h) few used "individual" for the prediction interval, "mean" for the confidence interval, and the phrase "95% of the time".
• Continuity correction. In 2(e) many candidates did not apply it or did not state the z-value clearly.
• No skew words. In 2(h)(i) the report says candidates should not use "skew", as it is not in the course specification.
• Samples. In 2(i) few said inference needs a representative random sample, not a known population.
• Medians. In Paper 2 question 4 only a few stated the hypotheses in terms of a population median difference of zero.

Try today's paper against these lines

There is no Advanced Higher Statistics daily paper, so use the Higher Applications of Maths paper, a short timed paper of 8 questions and 25 to 35 marks, as a nearby check. Convert your mark to a percentage: the 2026 A line is 68% and the C line 49%. It is a lower-level paper, so this is rough. The answers come once the paper is marked.

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