This paper examines the progression and pass rates among two cohorts (2001/02 and 2002/03) in a number of subject areas. It focuses on students in school. Including the two cohorts allows us to compare across the two years as well as looking at the progression of the individuals over two years.National Qualifications (NQs) in Scotland aim to offer 'opportunity for all', and especially for middle- and lower- attaining 16 year olds staying on at school who had been poorly served by the previous system of Highers and modules. The logic of the national qualifications framework is that all students should have an equally good chance of success (whatever their prior attainment) since they can now study at the level appropriate to their starting point. Thus S5 students with middle or low S4 attainment who can now study at the more appropriate levels of Intermediate 1 and 2 should have similar pass rates as the high S4 attainers. Previous research examined the extent to which NQs had managed to extend opportunities for these students and to improve their attainment in S5 and S6 and found that whilst the volume of study in S5 had increased among students with middle and lower Standard Grade attainment, they continued to have relatively low pass rates and these were strongly correlated with prior attainment. However, this work looked at average pass rates across all the subjects that students were presented for and identified the need for the further research reported on here which examines whether this general finding is true for every subject. In particular we wanted to investigate whether progression difficulties relate to the content of provision at the various levels, to assessment arrangements, to learning and teaching approaches or to some combination of these factors and this work has provided critical baseline data from which to explore these wider questions. The analyses provides comprehensive data on the progression and pass rates at the individual subject level of two cohorts of students. It enable comparison of trends in pass rates over the period and a consideration of progression from S4 through to S6 and significantly advances our understanding of the nature of the problem of relatively low pass rates of students with low and mid levels of attainment at Standard grade.