Inprimary education, secondary education and Baccalaureate, Spain uses a 0 to 10-point grading scale:
These are positive grades.
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 (Article 149)[2] and in the Organic Law for Universities.[3] 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, especially in STEM fields. 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 Records | Definition | 10-points grading scale | Definition | Estimated percentage | Estimated ECTS Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Matrícula de Honor | 10 | Topper in Class or Subject | 95 to 100% | A+ |
| 3 | Sobresaliente | 9 | 90% Contents assumed | 90 to 95% | A |
| 2 | Notable | 7 | 70% Contents assumed | 70 to 89.9% | B |
| 1 | Aprobado | 6 | 60% Contents assumed | 60 to 69.9% | C |
| 1 | Aprobado | 5.5 | 55% Contents assumed | 55 to 59.9% | D |
| 1 | Aprobado | 5 | 50% Contents assumed | 50 to 54.9% | E |
| Suspenso | Less than 50% contents assumed (60% in many cases) | 49% or below | FX-F |