The three components, the current Shakespeare and comparative-study set texts, and the April 2026 rule on AI use in the coursework — sourced to OCR's own specification.
Book a Free ConsultationOCR's A-Level English Literature is specification code H472 (qualification number 601/4725/8), on specification version 2.1, dated July 2026. It has three components: Component 01 (Drama and poetry pre-1900) and Component 02 (Comparative and contextual study), each a closed-text paper worth 60 marks and 40% of the grade, and Component 03 (Literature post-1900), a 40-mark, 20%-weighted non-exam coursework component.
Across the whole A-level, OCR requires a minimum of eight texts studied, including at least two examples each of prose, poetry and drama, at least three published before 1900 (one of them Shakespeare), at least one published after 2000, and at least one unseen text.
Know which components your child's school has entered them for? Our OCR English Literature tutors build every session around H472's own components, set texts and the April 2026 coursework rule — not a generic English Literature syllabus.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppH472's structure, taken directly from OCR's specification, is:
| Component | Marks | Duration | Weighting | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 Drama and poetry pre-1900 |
60 | 2 hours 30 minutes | 40% | Closed text exam |
| 02 Comparative and contextual study |
60 | 2 hours 30 minutes | 40% | Closed text exam |
| 03 Literature post-1900 |
40 | – | 20% | Non-exam assessment |
Source: OCR's A-Level English Literature specification (H472), version 2.1, July 2026.
Working the marks out from that table rather than taking anyone's word for it: Components 01 and 02 are each 60 marks, so together they carry 120 of the qualification's 160 total written-and-coursework marks — the two closed-text exam papers, sat at the end of the course, decide 80% of the final grade between them. The remaining 40 marks, and the remaining 20% of the grade, belong entirely to Component 03's coursework. OCR's specification is direct about completion: learners must complete all three components to be awarded the A-level, and every examined component must be sat in the same series at the end of the course — there is no route to a result from Components 01 and 02 alone. For how OCR's closed-text position compares with AQA, Edexcel and Eduqas, see the open/closed-book table on our A-Level English Literature guide; this page covers only what OCR itself requires.
Component 01 splits into two 30-mark sections. Section 1 is a single question on a Shakespeare play, chosen by the school from a list of six: Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Richard III, The Taming of the Shrew and The Tempest. Section 2 is a comparative question, with a choice of six, on one further pre-1900 text: a pre-1900 drama text, chosen from Marlowe's Edward II, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, Ibsen's A Doll's House or Wilde's An Ideal Husband; or a pre-1900 poetry text, chosen from Chaucer's The Merchant's Prologue and Tale, Milton's Paradise Lost Books 9 and 10, Coleridge's Selected Poems, Tennyson's Maud or Christina Rossetti's Selected Poems. OCR's specification dates this set of texts as examined until June 2028.
The Shakespeare list is not the one every older reading list assumes. OCR's October 2024 update to the specification (version 1.3, section 2c) swapped three of the six plays, for first teaching from 2025 and first assessment from 2027: Coriolanus, Measure for Measure and Twelfth Night were removed, and King Lear, Othello and The Taming of the Shrew were added. A family working from a reading list, a hand-me-down study guide or an older sibling's notes naming Coriolanus, Measure for Measure or Twelfth Night is looking at the specification as it stood before October 2024 — those three plays are no longer options for a current H472 candidate, and the two lists share only three titles in common (Hamlet, Richard III and The Tempest).
Component 02 offers a choice of five topic areas, each built around two named core set texts that the topic compares directly against each other:
| Topic | Two core set texts |
|---|---|
| American Literature 1880–1940 | F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath |
| The Gothic | Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories; Bram Stoker, Dracula |
| Dystopia | Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale; George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four |
| Women in Literature | Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility; Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway |
| The Immigrant Experience | Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Henry Roth, Call It Sleep |
Source: OCR's A-Level English Literature specification (H472), version 2.1, July 2026.
A student studies one topic and its two named texts, not all five and not all ten. The 60 marks in Component 02 split into two tasks: Task 1 is an unseen prose extract related to the topic, worth 30 marks, and Task 2 is a comparative essay on the two core texts, with a choice of three questions, also worth 30 marks. OCR's specification is explicit that none of these ten core set texts — across all five topics, not only the one a student studies — may then be reused for Component 03: "Learners may not study A level examination set texts for the non-exam assessment component. This includes all set texts for Component 01 and the ten core set texts for Component 02."
Whichever of the five Component 02 topics your child's school has chosen, our OCR English Literature tutors work with the two set texts on that topic directly, not a generic comparative-essay template.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppPer OCR's A-Level English Literature specification (H472), version 2.1, July 2026, Component 03 is coursework, not a timed paper: 40 marks and 20% of the grade, marked by the school and moderated by OCR. It runs across two tasks on three student-chosen texts — one prose, one poetry and one drama, all first published or performed in 1900 or later, with at least one from 2000 or later, and none of them studied in translation or reused from Components 01 or 02. Task 1 is worth 15 marks: either a close reading of an extract from one of the three texts, at a recommended length of about 1,000 words, or a re-creative piece of about 350–400 words with a 600–650 word commentary on the choices made. Task 2 is worth 25 marks: a comparative essay across two of the three texts, at a recommended length of 2,000 words. OCR's suggested total length for the whole component is 3,000 words, and text and task choices must be submitted to OCR by 31 January of the year of assessment — a date that falls in the middle of Year 13, well before study leave, making text selection a task for Year 12 rather than something to leave until the final term.
The most consequential change to Component 03 sits inside OCR's April 2026 specification update. Version 2, dated April 2026, added a new section — 4e, headed "AI use in the NEA" — that did not exist in any earlier version of H472. It requires teachers delivering the coursework to follow JCQ's guidelines, "AI Use in Assessments: Your role in protecting the integrity of qualifications," and sets out what that means in practice: teachers must monitor a student's progress through Component 03 so that the finished work meets the marking criteria, can be confidently authenticated as the student's own, and is not credited if AI use means the student has not independently met that criteria. OCR's own wording, in the same section, is direct: "Teachers must provide sufficient supervision to be able to confidently authenticate that the work submitted is the student's independent work." In practice, this puts a live check on the two tasks above — the close reading or re-creative piece, and the comparative essay — that did not exist on H472 before April 2026, and it is not a rule that appears on any generic cross-board English Literature page, because it is specific to how OCR runs its own coursework.
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OCR publishes grade boundaries by component, not as a single blended figure, and the June 2025 series — OCR's most recent published boundaries — sets out exactly how much separates each grade on each paper:
| Component (June 2025 series) | Max mark | A* | A | B |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 — Drama and poetry pre-1900 | 60 | 55 | 52 | 45 |
| 02 — Comparative and contextual study | 60 | 57 | 54 | 47 |
| 03 — Literature post-1900 (NEA) | 40 | 38 | 36 | 32 |
| Overall (01+02 weighted to 80 each, +03) | 200 | 187 | 177 | 155 |
Source: OCR's AS and A Level Grade Boundaries, June 2025 — a separate document from the specification PDF above.
Two things follow from a component-level table that a single blended number hides. First, Component 02 is the highest-scoring paper at the top end (A* at 57 of 60, against 55 of 60 on Component 01), while Component 03's coursework has the widest gap between A* and B in percentage terms (38 down to 32 of 40) — three different papers, three different distances between a strong grade and a top one. Second, the overall row is not a simple average: OCR weights Components 01 and 02 up from 60 to 80 marks each before combining them with Component 03's 40, for a 200-mark total, so a candidate's raw Component 01 and 02 scores are never compared directly against the overall boundary. These are June 2025 series figures specifically; OCR resets boundaries at every series based on that year's national performance, so they describe what June 2025 required, not a fixed target for future series.
Moving from a B to an A on H472 means closing a different gap on each component — our OCR English Literature tutors work component by component, against OCR's own mark schemes, rather than treating the A-level as one undifferentiated exam.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppWe start from H472's own components rather than a generic English Literature syllabus, because the specification code on the exam entry determines which Shakespeare play, which of the five Component 02 topics and which three Component 03 texts a student is actually working with. For a new OCR English Literature student, the first session establishes exactly that combination against the school's own scheme of work, then builds a two-year programme around it: closed-text quotation and analysis technique for Components 01 and 02, and staged, supervised drafting for the two Component 03 tasks that keeps a student's coursework inside OCR's April 2026 authentication rule from the first draft rather than raising it as a concern at submission.
91% of our students achieve their desired grades, and we are rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews, read on 7 September 2026. For the wider cross-board picture on A-Level English Literature, including how AQA, Edexcel and Eduqas each handle open and closed book papers, see our A-Level English Literature guide. Families still deciding between a Year 12 AS entry and the full two-year course should see our Year 12 OCR A-Level English Literature page, which covers that decision and OCR's AS withdrawal status in full. Our English Literature tutor service covers GCSE and A-level together, and the A-level tutoring hub covers every other subject at this level.
Whichever Shakespeare play, Component 02 topic or Component 03 texts your child's school has set, our OCR English Literature tutors build the two-year programme around them.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppOCR's A-Level English Literature is specification code H472, qualification number 601/4725/8. Version 2.1 of the specification, dated July 2026, is OCR's current document. It is built from three components: Component 01 (Drama and poetry pre-1900) and Component 02 (Comparative and contextual study) are each worth 60 marks and 40% of the grade, and Component 03 (Literature post-1900) is a 40-mark, 20%-weighted non-exam assessment. Learners must complete all three components to be awarded the A-level.
60 marks each, 120 combined. OCR's specification marks both as closed text: Component 01 is a 2 hour 30 minute paper worth 60 marks and 40% of the grade, and Component 02 is a separate 2 hour 30 minute paper also worth 60 marks and 40% of the grade. Between them, Components 01 and 02 carry 120 of the qualification's 160 written exam marks; the remaining 40 marks sit in Component 03, which is coursework rather than a written exam.
OCR's Component 01 offers a choice of one play from six: Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Richard III, The Taming of the Shrew and The Tempest. The list changed in OCR's October 2024 specification update (version 1.3): three plays were removed — Coriolanus, Measure for Measure and Twelfth Night — and three were added — King Lear, Othello and The Taming of the Shrew — for first teaching from 2025 and first assessment from 2027. A student on an older reading list naming Coriolanus, Measure for Measure or Twelfth Night is working from the specification as it stood before October 2024.
American Literature 1880-1940, The Gothic, Dystopia, Women in Literature, and The Immigrant Experience. Each topic is built around two core set texts: American Literature 1880-1940 pairs F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath; The Gothic pairs Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories with Bram Stoker's Dracula; Dystopia pairs Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four; Women in Literature pairs Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility with Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway; and The Immigrant Experience pairs Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist with Henry Roth's Call It Sleep. A student studies one topic and its two texts, not all five.
Component 03 requires three post-1900 texts — one prose, one poetry, one drama, with at least one published after 2000 and none in translation — across two tasks: Task 1 is worth 15 marks (a close reading of about 1,000 words, or a 350-400 word re-creative piece with a 600-650 word commentary), and Task 2 is a 2,000-word comparative essay worth 25 marks. Yes: OCR's April 2026 specification update (version 2) added a new section, 4e, headed 'AI use in the NEA'. It requires teachers to follow JCQ's guidelines on AI in assessments and to monitor a student's progress so that the work meets the marking criteria, can be confidently authenticated as the student's own, and is not credited where AI use means the student has not independently met that criteria.
In the June 2025 series, OCR's component-level boundaries were: Component 01 (max 60) A* 55, A 52, B 45; Component 02 (max 60) A* 57, A 54, B 47; Component 03 (max 40) A* 38, A 36, B 32. The overall grade boundaries, out of 200 with the two exam components weighted to 80 marks each, were A* 187, A 177, B 155. These are June 2025 series figures only, published on OCR's grade boundaries document, and move each series with the national cohort's performance.
By 31 January of the year of assessment, per OCR's specification. This is separate from the deadline for submitting the completed, moderated coursework itself, and falls in the middle of Year 13 for a student on the standard two-year route — well before study leave begins, which makes early text selection in Component 03 a Year 12 planning task rather than something to leave until the final term.
No. OCR's specification states there is one examination series available each year, in May/June, and that all examined components must be taken in the same series at the end of the course. A student who needs to improve a grade must retake all examined components together; OCR does allow a student to carry forward their most recent Component 03 result instead of resitting the coursework, but the two written papers cannot be resat individually or out of series.
Checked 7 September 2026: specification code, component structure, set texts, the April 2026 AI-use rule and grade boundaries were verified directly against OCR's own H472 specification PDF (version 2.1, July 2026) and its separate June 2025 grade boundaries PDF, not against OCR's HTML qualification pages. Last updated 7 September 2026.
Official Sources
Component by component, against OCR's own H472 specification. Rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews. Start with the A-Level English Literature guide or the A-level tutoring hub.
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