Academic grading in Spain


Primary, secondary and Baccalaureate education

In primary education, secondary education, Baccalaureate education Spain uses a 0 to 10-point grading scale:
Spanish universities use two different grading scales. The students' performance is assessed using a 0 to 10-point grading scale, where 10 corresponds to the 100% of the academical contents of the course which in turn are regulated by the Ministry of Education as established in the Spanish Constitution and in the Organic Law for Universities. In consequence, it is not rare to find courses where it is necessary to reach the 50% of the content and only a 20% of the students passes the course, specially in sciences, health related and engineering degrees. The grades can be expressed in words as follows:
Furthermore, when a student has passed a subject according to this 10-point scale, her or his grade is converted to the following 0 to 4-point scale and recorded in her/his transcript of records:
Since the grades are evaluated according to the percentage of academical contents reached by the student, the percentage of students for each mark varies depending on the difficulty of the course and the generation of students. Therefore, there is no direct correspondence to the ECTS grading scale, which is based on the class percentile of passed students in a given assessment. For this reason, the following table is an approximation:
Grade in Spanish Academic RecordsDefinition10-points grading scaleDefinitionEstimated percentageEstimated ECTS Grade
4Matrícula de Honor10Topper in Class or Subject95 to 100%A+
3Sobresaliente990% Contents assumed90 to 95%A
2Notable770% Contents assumed70 to 89.9%B
1Aprobado660% Contents assumed60 to 69.9%C
1Aprobado5.555% Contents assumed55 to 59.9%D
1Aprobado550% Contents assumed50 to 54.9%E
SuspensoLess than 50% contents assumed 49% or belowFX-F