National 5 Applications of Maths grade boundaries 2026

National 5 Applications of Maths grade boundaries 2026

The table is the Applications of Mathematics row of the National 5 sheet in Grade boundaries 2026 (release 26GB, 4 August 2026); the counts are from the 2026 course report.

That is an A at 72.2%, a B at 62.2%, a C at 53.3% and a D at 43.3%. The C share is above the 50% starting point. See the National 5 Applications of Maths guide for the papers.

What the 90 marks are made of

Paper 1 (no calculator, 50 minutes) is 35 marks and Paper 2 (1 hour 40 minutes, calculator) is 55, for a total of 90. A formulae list is printed with both papers. A boundary is applied to the sum, not to each paper separately, per the specification.

Turning a mark into a grade

Imagine 18 of 35 on Paper 1 and 34 of 55 on Paper 2: that is 52. The C line is 48 and the B line is 56, so the grade is C, 4 marks short of a B. Take 4 marks off and you get 48, still a C, because the boundary is the lowest mark for the grade. Take 5 off and the total of 47 is a D.

The official formulas give B and D from A and C. Here A is 65 and C is 48, a gap of 17, so B = 48 + ⌊35 ÷ 4⌋ = 48 + 8 = 56 and D = 48 − ⌈33 ÷ 4⌉ = 48 − 9 = 39, which are the published figures.

2026 against earlier years

In 2026 A stayed at 65, B rose by one mark to 56, C by two to 48 and D by three to 39. Over five series C has gone 41, 41, 43, 46, 48 and D 30, 30, 33, 36, 39, so the lines have risen every year since 2023 while the A line moved only from 63 to 65. The gap between A and C has narrowed from 22 marks in 2023 to 17.

What Qualifications Scotland said about the 2026 papers

The 2026 report says Paper 2 was less demanding than intended, and so were questions 3(a), 4(b), 5(b) and 7(d) in it. On Paper 1, question 4(a) was less demanding than intended and questions 6, 7 and 9 were more demanding, and boundaries were set with that in mind.

The marks that went: on Paper 1, most candidates did not use a valid strategy for question 10 on direct proportion, many got nothing for the perimeter involving a quarter circle, and many did not convert 1.5 minutes into seconds. Many also did not answer the critical path question correctly. On Paper 2, most candidates did not construct the whole bearing diagram or measure the return bearing, most did not work out a percentage profit because they divided by the wrong number, and few compared the mean and standard deviation well.

What this means for revision

The 2026 report repeats a theme: number skills on Paper 1, and units and conversions throughout. Write the unit at every step, change minutes to the unit the formula needs, and say what a percentage profit is divided by. The Mean, Median and Mode Calculator helps with the statistics comparisons.

The earlier figures are in National 5 Applications of Maths grade boundaries 2025. See SQA grade boundaries 2026 for the other courses.

Check yourself with today's paper

We do not have a daily paper for National 5 Applications of Maths. The nearest is the National 5 Maths paper, which is a short timed paper of 8 questions and 25 to 35 marks, written by us. Use it for non-calculator practice with percentages, fractions and statistics, and divide your mark by the total to get a percentage. On the 2026 scale a 54% would be a C, just above 53.3%.

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Scotland · National 5National 5 Applications of Maths grade boundaries 2025National 5 Applications of Maths grade boundaries 2025 from the SQA: A needed 65 of 90, B 55, C 46 and D 36, with 29.1% getting an A.