Prior to the year 2000, the Certificate of Sixth Year Studies (CSYS) was the highest level of qualification available to pupils in the Scottish secondary education system.
Overseen by the Scottish Examination Board (SEB), it was taken by students in their sixth year (final year) of secondary education (ages 16-18) and was available for a range of different subjects. Examinations were administered by the SEB (and latterly by its successor, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, which replaced it in September 1997). Unlike the Standard and Higher Grade examinations, it was not a part of the Scottish Certificate of Education.
The CSYS followed on from Higher Grade examinations and was considered broadly equivalent to the English A-Level qualification. However, it never quite gained the same level of universal recognition as the Higher or A-Level. In particular, universities rarely used it when considering potential students.
Following plans for extensive reorganisation of the secondary education system in the late 1990s, the CSYS was phased out, starting in the 2000/01 examination year. By 2002/03, it had been completely replaced by its successor, the Advanced Higher.
Famous quotes containing the words certificate, sixth, year and/or studies:
“God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same in God’s coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The real dividing line between early childhood and middle childhood is not between the fifth year and the sixth year—it is more nearly when children are about seven or eight, moving on toward nine. Building the barrier at six has no psychological basis. It has come about only from the historic-economic-political fact that the age of six is when we provide schools for all.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“He bends to the order of the seasons, the weather, the soils and crops, as the sails of a ship bend to the wind. He represents continuous hard labor, year in, year out, and small gains. He is a slow person, timed to Nature, and not to city watches. He takes the pace of seasons, plants and chemistry. Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)