National 5 Computing Science grade boundaries 2025

National 5 Computing Science grade boundaries 2025

The table is the Computing Science row of the National 5 sheet in the SQA's Grade boundaries 2025 (release 25GB, 5 August 2025); the grade counts are from the SQA's 2025 course report.

An A took 71.7% of the marks, a B 61.7%, a C 51.7% and a D 41.7%. All four were above the 70, 60, 50 and 40 starting points. See the National 5 Computing Science guide for the course.

What the 120 marks are made of

The 120 marks come from a question paper of 80 marks, which lasts 1 hour 30 minutes, and an assignment of 40 marks, per the course specification: the grade is based on the total across both. The paper has a 55-mark section for everyone, covering software design and development and computer systems, and a 25-mark section where you choose database design or web design. The assignment has a 25-mark software task and a 15-mark database or web task. The assignment counts for a third of the marks.

In 2025 about 60% of candidates completed the database sections and about 40% the web sections, according to the course report.

How many candidates got each grade in 2025

Nearly half of candidates, 3,279 or 49.8%, got an A, the highest A rate of the National 5 courses in our guides, and only 8.7%, 573 candidates, got No Award. B was 18.1%, C 14.1% and D 9.3%. Entries were 6,583, down slightly from 6,744 in 2024.

Turning a mark into a grade

A candidate scores 62 out of 80 on the paper and 28 out of 40 on the assignment, 90 in all. That is above the A boundary of 86 and 14 below the upper A of 104. A candidate with 44 on the paper and 20 on the assignment has 64, a C, 10 marks below the B line at 74.

The B and D lines come from A and C by the SQA's formulas. A is 86 and C is 62, so the gap is 24: B = 62 + ⌊49 ÷ 4⌋ = 62 + 12 = 74, and D = 62 − ⌈47 ÷ 4⌉ = 62 − 12 = 50.

2025 against earlier years

Between 2024 and 2025 the A line rose from 84 to 86, B from 72 to 74, C from 60 to 62 and D from 48 to 50, every line by 2 marks. The upper A went from 102 to 104. In 2019 the course was out of 160, with an A at 112 (70.0%) and a C at 78 (48.8%), so the 2025 shares of 71.7% and 51.7% are a bit higher. In 2022 and 2023 the C line was 57 and 56, 47.5% and 46.7%.

What the SQA said about the 2025 papers

The report says candidate performance on the question paper improved on earlier years, particularly in the higher tariff problem-solving questions, and that there were far fewer scripts with no response in the larger questions. But the paper was slightly less demanding than intended, because of more predictable one-mark short-response questions, so the grade boundaries at A and C were adjusted. In the assignment, candidates got more marks for practical coding than for the written analysis and evaluation tasks, and the assignment performed as intended.

What candidates found demanding: "describe" and "explain" questions, which were often poorly expressed, without technical language or context (question 2 on a stage of the software process; question 6 on concatenation). Questions 12(a), (b) and (c) were designed to be challenging. Some candidates could not write the SQL update statement (16(c)), and in the web section they struggled to explain how to reduce sound file sizes (21(c)(ii)) and the difference between absolute and relative addressing (18). In the assignment many used one if statement for input validation instead of a loop, and many did not refer to their own code in the evaluation.

What the 2025 numbers mean for you

The assignment is a third of the marks and its tasks are practical, so they can be rehearsed: write the validation as a loop, design with the data flow given, and say specific things about your own code, not "it is efficient". Practise number and logic questions with the Truth Table Generator.

For the next series, see National 5 Computing Science grade boundaries 2026. For every course, see SQA grade boundaries 2025.

Check yourself with today's paper

Sit today's National 5 Computing Science paper, a short timed paper of 8 questions and 25 to 35 marks written by us. It has no assignment, so it tests the question paper skills only. Divide your mark by the total: 22 out of 30 is 73.3%, above the A share of 71.7%, and 16 out of 30 is 53.3%, above the C share of 51.7%.

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Scotland · National 5National 5 Computing Science grade boundaries 2026National 5 Computing Science grade boundaries 2026 from Qualifications Scotland: A needed 84 of 120, B 71, C 58 and D 45, with 2025 compared.