GCE Advanced Level (United Kingdom)

The General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced Level, or A Level, is a secondary school leaving qualification in the United Kingdom, offered as a main qualification in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as an alternative qualification in Scotland, and as an international school qualification worldwide.

A Levels require studying an offered A level subject over a two-year period and sitting for an examination at the end of each year (A1/S and A2, respectively), proctored by an official assessment body. Most students study three or four A level subjects simultaneously during the two post-16 years (ages 16–18) in a secondary school, in a sixth form college, in a further and higher education college, or in a tertiary college, as part of their further education. A levels are regarded as equivalent in level to the BTEC Level 3 qualifications.

A Levels are recognised by many universities as the standard for assessing the suitability of applicants for admission in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and many such universities partly base their admissions offers on a student's predicted A-level grades, with the majority of these offers conditional on achieving a minimum set of final grades.

A Levels were introduced in 1951 as a standardised post 18 qualification, replacing the Higher School Certificate. The examinations could be taken on a subject-by-subject basis, according to the strengths and interests of the student. This encouraged specialization and in-depth study of three to four subjects. The A Level at first was graded as simply distinction, pass or fail (although students were given an indication of their marks, to the nearest 5%), candidates obtaining a distinction originally had the option to sit a Scholarship Level paper on the same material, to attempt to win one of 400 national scholarships. The Scholarship Level was replaced by the S-Level in 1963.

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