This article focus on how teachers’ experience the criterion-referenced grading system as a phenomenon and consists of one of three themes from a thesis titled Not yet passed: How teachers’ experience a criterion-referenced grading system and what they say about its use in Swedish secondary schools. The empirical study was carried out as semi-structured audiotaped interviews with thirty qualified teachers, in the subjects English, Maths and Swedish, who all had experiences of assessing and grading according to the new grading system. Teachers in just these subjects are the only ones that have national tests as a support for grading their students. This theme has a phenomenographic approach. The results are described in four hierarchically arranged categories. The results show that the new criterionreferenced grading system in secondary schools in Sweden seems to function unsatisfactorily. Teachers seem not to have grasped the assumptions underlying the grading system. The change from grading based on quantitative aspects of knowledge to qualitative ones, was evidently too big a step. Instead teachers’ assessments and gradings follow ingrained habits.