This study aims to compare and contrast Swedish and Italian upper secondary school students’ and teachers’ conceptions of the ways in which the grading systems of Sweden and Italy are applied. The study has been conducted mainly through student questionnaires and teacher interviews. The results that have been obtained can be linked to the differences that exist between the teaching and grading systems of the two countries. In Italy, schools regulate teaching and grading to a much greater extent than is the case in Sweden. The local core curricula are very specific in their enumeration of aims and objectives, as well as of grading criteria, and of what teaching material should be used and in what pace. Different classes often take the same test, and teachers often sit down together to grade them. Teachers are not as free as Swedish teachers are to choose their own material with which to work, or to adjust their planning and pace to the individual interests and needs of the students. However, Italian students nevertheless seem to perceive the grading process as more equalised than their Swedish counterparts, who are part of a system where the teachers are much more free to plan their own teaching and testing. In Sweden, then, it is much more difficult to compare the testing and the grading of two or more teachers and classes, and the system is thereby perceived to be less equalised. In the last semester of Italian upper secondary school – or liceo, as it is called – the students sit a number of national examinations, the grades of which constitute 80 percent of the students’ final grades. This means that Italian students are less dependent than their Swedish counterparts on the grades given them by their teachers each semester. Thus, they are less inclined to feel that the relationships between teachers and students affect the grades. On the other hand, Italian students’ grades are more affected by how the students perform on a few specific occasions. Thereby, stress seems to affect Italian students more than it affects Swedish ones; moreover, grades are generally perceived to be less fair, on the whole, than they are perceived to be in Sweden. Italian students are also more inclined than the Swedish ones to favour an abolishment of the grading system.