First Posted: 1/9/2015

RALEIGH (AP) — North Carolina high school students will have more leeway to earn better grades starting with the next academic year which begins in August.

The State Board of Education approved a plan Thursday to convert the current seven-point grading scale into a 10-point scale.

That means a student earning between 90 percent and 100 percent of the marks in a course would earn an A grade. The current scale means a B grade for students earning 90, 91 or 92.

The school board last summer approved the change for incoming high school freshman this fall.

Since then, local school district officials and parents complained that unless the rules apply to everyone attending high school, students in the same class doing the same quality of work could get different grades.