The board's own prescribed poets and plays, which assessment objective actually decides each paper's marks, and the real grade boundaries Eduqas set for A720QS this June — component by component.
Book a Free ConsultationEduqas's A-level English Literature specification, entry code A720QS, is Version 3, March 2020 — the current, standing document, published for teaching from 2015 and award from 2017. Eduqas is a separate, Ofqual-regulated qualification from WJEC's own A-level English Literature (code 1720QS), sat only in Wales; the full code distinction, and Eduqas's withdrawal of its free-standing AS, are set out on our Year 12 WJEC Eduqas English Literature guide.
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Our Eduqas English Literature tutors work from the board's own set texts and grade boundaries, not a generic A-level scheme of work.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppWhat follows is A720QS's own content: the poets and plays it prescribes component by component, what its Unseen Texts paper actually asks a student to do, which assessment objective decides the most marks on each paper, how the non-exam Prose Study is marked, and the grade boundaries Eduqas set for the June 2026 series. For open-book and closed-book rules and grade boundaries on AQA, Edexcel and OCR's A-level English Literature specifications, see our A-Level English Literature guide — Eduqas is not one of the boards it covers.
Component 1, Poetry, is a two-hour, 120-mark paper worth 30% of the qualification, split into two sections. Section A is built from a single pre-1900 poetry text, chosen from five named options in Eduqas's specification: Geoffrey Chaucer's The Merchant's Prologue and Tale (Cambridge), John Donne's Selected Poems (Penguin Classics), John Milton's Paradise Lost Book IX (Oxford), William Blake's Poems selected by Patti Smith (Vintage), and Christina Rossetti's Selected Poems (Penguin Classics). The Blake option is not original to the specification: it replaced John Keats's Selected Poems, which the same document records as valid “for assessment in summer 2020 and 2021 only” and which the exam board has since superseded — a student's revision list should name Blake, not Keats.
Section B pairs one post-1900 poet with another, one pre-1900 and one post-1900 — five current pairings run through the specification: Thomas Hardy (selected by Tom Paulin, Faber) with T S Eliot (Selected Poems, Faber); W. B. Yeats (selected by Seamus Heaney, Faber) with Dannie Abse (Welsh Retrospective, Seren); Ted Hughes (selected by Simon Armitage, Faber) with Sylvia Plath (selected by Ted Hughes, Faber); Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings (Faber) with Carol Ann Duffy's Mean Time (Picador); and Seamus Heaney's Field Work (Faber) with Owen Sheers's Skirrid Hill (Seren). As with Section A, one pairing on the same list is superseded rather than current: D H Lawrence and Gillian Clarke was valid “for assessment in summer 2020 and 2021 only”, and the Yeats-and-Abse pairing has stood in its place since the summer 2022 series.
Component 2, Drama, mirrors Component 1's structure and weighting — also two hours, 120 marks, 30% of the qualification. Section A sets one Shakespeare play from five named options: King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Henry IV Part 1, and The Tempest. Section B pairs a pre-1900 play with a post-1900 play, again from five fixed options: Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (Longman) with Lucy Prebble's Enron (Methuen); John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (Methuen) with Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire (Penguin Modern Classics); Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy (Methuen) with Joe Orton's Loot (Methuen); Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan (New Mermaids) with Harold Pinter's Betrayal (Faber); and Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (any edition) with David Hare's Murmuring Judges (Faber). Every text named above, for both components, comes directly from Eduqas's own specification, retrieved 7 September 2026.
Component 3, Unseen Texts, is a two-hour, 80-mark paper worth 20% of the qualification — smaller than Components 1 and 2, and marked differently again from Component 4. It has two sections, and only one of them fixes a period. Section A, Unseen Prose, draws each question from a specific era: Eduqas's specification states “Question 1 will take a prose passage from the period 1880-1910. Question 2 will take a prose passage from the period 1918-1939.” A student can prepare for the style and concerns of those two eras of prose even though the exact extract is new on the day.
Section B, Unseen Poetry, carries no such restriction: the specification allows “an unseen poem or poetry extract from any period.” That is a meaningfully wider brief than Section A's two fixed prose eras, and it means unseen-poetry practice cannot be narrowed to a period in the way unseen-prose practice can. Nothing in either section of Component 3 is pre-studied text; the only preparation available is practising the skill of a first, timed reading.
Eduqas's specification sets out five assessment objectives — AO1 (articulate informed, personal and creative responses to literary texts), AO2 (analyse ways in which meanings are shaped in literary texts), AO3 (demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of contexts), AO4 (explore connections across literary texts) and AO5 (explore literary texts informed by different interpretations) — and weights each differently by component. Overall, AO2 carries the largest single share of the qualification at 30%, ahead of AO1 on 25%, AO3 on 20%, AO5 on 15% and AO4 on 10%.
| Component | AO1 | AO2 | AO3 | AO4 | AO5 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1: Poetry | 7.5% | 10% | 5% | 2.5% | 5% | 30% |
| 2: Drama | 5% | 7.5% | 7.5% | 5% | 5% | 30% |
| 3: Unseen Texts | 7.5% | 7.5% | 2.5% | – | 2.5% | 20% |
| 4: Prose Study | 5% | 5% | 5% | 2.5% | 2.5% | 20% |
| Overall | 25% | 30% | 20% | 10% | 15% | 100% |
Source: Eduqas A-level English Literature specification, AO weighting grid, retrieved 7 September 2026.
The pattern is not the same paper to paper. Component 1 weights AO2 highest of the five, at 10% of its own 30% — the heaviest single AO weighting anywhere on the qualification. Component 2 splits its top weighting between AO2 and AO3 at 7.5% each. Component 3 does the same between AO1 and AO2, also at 7.5% each. Component 4, the Prose Study, is the most evenly spread of the four: AO1, AO2 and AO3 each carry 5%, with AO4 and AO5 at 2.5% apiece. A revision plan built around “analysis matters most everywhere” would be correct on Component 1 and wrong about the balance elsewhere. The table above is the whole grid Eduqas publishes for A720QS — every percentage in it, by component and overall, comes from the same source and the same retrieval date, so a family can check any single cell against the original rather than taking a summary on trust.
Which AO is holding your child's marks back?
Our Eduqas English Literature tutors target the assessment objective each paper actually rewards most — AO2 on Component 1, AO2/AO3 on Component 2 — rather than a single generic essay technique.
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Component 4, the Prose Study, is Eduqas's non-exam assessment: 2,500–3,500 words, worth 80 marks and 20% of the qualification. What counts toward that word count is stated precisely in Eduqas's specification: “The advisory word count includes quotations used within a candidate's assignment. References made through footnotes and bibliographies are excluded from the word count.” A student cannot pad the count with an inflated bibliography, but embedded quotation is not free of it either.
The assignment is marked against all five assessment objectives, and Eduqas's own Appendix A assessment grid sets out the split precisely: AO1 20 marks, AO2 20 marks, AO3 20 marks, AO4 10 marks and AO5 10 marks, totalling the component's 80 marks. That is a flatter distribution than any of the three exam papers, where AO4 and AO5 typically carry less weight relative to AO1–AO3.
Resits work differently for Component 4 than for the rest of the qualification. On the three exam components, Eduqas's specification is explicit: “Candidates must resit all examination components in the same series” — a student cannot resit Component 1 alone while banking old marks for Components 2 and 3. The NEA is the exception: “Marks for NEA may be carried forward for the life of the specification.” But carrying forward is a choice, not the only route — if a candidate resits the NEA rather than carrying the old mark forward, “it is the new mark that will count towards the overall grade, even if it is lower than a previous attempt.” A resit is a genuine gamble in a way that carrying forward is not.
Eduqas publishes grade boundaries by series, and the boundaries below are for the June 2026 series — the latest series published for A720QS. Sourced directly from Eduqas's June 2026 grade-points document, the overall qualification boundaries, out of a maximum 400 marks, are: A* 314, A 286, B 239, C 192, D 145 and E 98.
| June 2026 series | Max | A* | A | B | C | D | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A720QS overall | 400 | 314 | 286 | 239 | 192 | 145 | 98 |
| Component 1: Poetry | 120 | 93 | 84 | 72 | 60 | 48 | 35 |
| Component 2: Drama | 120 | 90 | 80 | 67 | 54 | 40 | 27 |
| Component 3: Unseen Texts | 80 | 58 | 53 | 45 | 36 | 28 | 20 |
| Component 4: Prose Study | 80 | 73 | 69 | 55 | 42 | 29 | 16 |
Source: Eduqas GCE A Level grade points, June 2026 series, retrieved 7 September 2026.
Read as a share of available marks rather than raw marks, Component 4's A* boundary is the highest of the four: 73 out of 80 is just over 91% of the component, against roughly 78% on Component 1 (93/120), 75% on Component 2 (90/120) and 72% on Component 3 (58/80). The June 2026 series set a noticeably tighter margin for top marks on the coursework component than on any timed paper on this specification.
Taken together, the set texts, the AO weighting table and the June 2026 boundaries point to different priorities on each component rather than one uniform approach to “English Literature revision”. On Component 1, AO2 — analysing how meaning is shaped — is the single heaviest weighting on the whole qualification at 10%, so close analytical work on the chosen pre-1900 poet and post-1900 pair earns more than breadth of context alone. Component 2 rewards AO2 and AO3 equally, meaning contextual knowledge of the paired plays' periods carries as much weight as analysis of technique. Component 3 cannot be pre-studied at all, so preparation has to be a practised skill — timed reading of unseen prose from the two fixed eras, and unseen poetry from any period, under Component 3's two-hour limit.
Component 4 is the outlier on every measure: the flattest AO spread of the four components, the only one without a formal timed sitting, and the highest A* boundary as a share of its marks in the June 2026 series. A prose study built and redrafted well ahead of the two exam papers, rather than left until after they are prepared for, matches where Eduqas has actually set the bar.
Building a programme around A720QS's own components
Whether your child needs closer analytical work for Component 1's AO2 weighting, contextual depth for Component 2, timed unseen practice for Component 3, or a Component 4 Prose Study drafted to the mark bands Eduqas actually uses, our Eduqas English Literature tutors plan sessions around the paper in front of them.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppEduqas's A-level English Literature specification sets five post-1900 paired-poet options for Component 1 Section B: Thomas Hardy and T S Eliot; W. B. Yeats and Dannie Abse; Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath; Philip Larkin and Carol Ann Duffy; and Seamus Heaney and Owen Sheers. The Yeats-and-Abse pairing only became current from summer 2022 onwards -- the same specification records a sixth pair, D H Lawrence and Gillian Clarke, as valid “for assessment in summer 2020 and 2021 only,” meaning it is superseded and not a live option.
AO2 -- analysing ways in which meanings are shaped in literary texts -- carries the largest single share of the qualification at 30% overall, ahead of AO1 on 25%, AO3 on 20%, AO5 on 15% and AO4 on 10%. The pattern is not uniform component by component: Component 1 (Poetry) weights AO2 highest at 10% of its own 30%, while Component 3 (Unseen Texts) weights AO1 and AO2 equally at 7.5% each, and Component 4 (the Prose Study) splits AO1, AO2 and AO3 equally at 5% each.
Component 3 is a two-hour, 80-mark paper worth 20% of the qualification, split into two sections. Section A, Unseen Prose, fixes the historical period for each question rather than the passage itself: Eduqas's specification states “Question 1 will take a prose passage from the period 1880-1910. Question 2 will take a prose passage from the period 1918-1939.” Section B, Unseen Poetry, is unrestricted by period -- the specification allows “an unseen poem or poetry extract from any period.” Both sections present material a student has never seen before; nothing in Component 3 is pre-studied.
Eduqas's specification is explicit that quotations count toward the 2,500-3,500 advisory word count, while the supporting apparatus does not: “The advisory word count includes quotations used within a candidate's assignment. References made through footnotes and bibliographies are excluded from the word count.” The assignment is marked against all five assessment objectives, with Eduqas's own assessment grid allocating 20 marks each to AO1, AO2 and AO3, and 10 marks each to AO4 and AO5, out of the component's 80 marks.
Eduqas's specification sets one rule for the three exam components and a different one for the NEA: “Candidates must resit all examination components in the same series.” A student cannot resit Component 1 alone while carrying forward old marks for Components 2 and 3. The Component 4 NEA works differently -- “marks for NEA may be carried forward for the life of the specification,” but if a candidate resits the NEA rather than carrying the mark forward, “it is the new mark that will count towards the overall grade, even if it is lower than a previous attempt.”
Eduqas's June 2026 grade-points document sets the overall A720QS boundaries, out of 400 marks, at A* 314, A 286, B 239, C 192, D 145 and E 98. Per component, the June 2026 boundaries are: Component 1 (Poetry, out of 120) A* 93, A 84, B 72, C 60, D 48, E 35; Component 2 (Drama, out of 120) A* 90, A 80, B 67, C 54, D 40, E 27; Component 3 (Unseen Texts, out of 80) A* 58, A 53, B 45, C 36, D 28, E 20; and Component 4 (Prose Study, out of 80) A* 73, A 69, B 55, C 42, D 29, E 16.
Programmes are built around A720QS's own four components -- the Component 1 and 2 set texts a student has actually been given, Component 3's fixed unseen-prose periods, and the Component 4 NEA's mark bands -- rather than a generic English Literature scheme. 91% of our students achieve their desired grades, and we are rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews.
Reviewed September 2026: specification edition, component structure, set texts, AO weightings and grade boundaries were checked against Eduqas's (WJEC CBAC) own A-level English Literature specification and its June 2026 grade-points document, both retrieved 7 September 2026.
From Component 1's set-poet analysis to the Component 4 Prose Study, our Eduqas English Literature tutors work from A720QS's own specification, not a generic syllabus.
Rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews. See also our A-Level English guide, our Year 12 WJEC Eduqas guide, and English Literature Tutoring.
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