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On my working experience in the University of Tartu, Estonia

  The Study Regulations of the University of Tartu ( https://www.ut.ee/en/university/documents ) enact grading of students according to their gained learning outcomes (§ 93, 94). I very much like this, in particular because the position of the modern education science also supports this approach (e.g. Biggs, J., Tang, C.: Teaching for Quality Learning at University). This opposes to rank-based grading which means that the teacher must follow a certain distribution of grades predefined in terms of percentages of students taking the course. Rank-based grading is still popular in the world, although criticized by scientists because it implies that the grades a student gets much depend on the skills of other students who took the same courses and cannot be associated to the learning outcomes achieved by that particular person. Grading according to the gained learning outcomes is stated also in the Estonian decree on grading standards in higher education.   The reality unfortunately differ