Year 13 AQA A-Level English Literature (7712 and 7717) in 2027

A Year 13 studying AQA English Literature is entered under one of six A-level codes, not under 7712 or 7717 alone. English Literature A carries two — 7712A and 7712B — and English Literature B carries four: 7717AA, 7717AB, 7717BA and 7717BB. That code fixes which two question papers the student sits on 13 and 20 May 2027, and which of the two runs for three hours.

Which of AQA’s six A-level English Literature entry codes is your Year 13 sitting?

The entry codes are set out in section 7.1 of each specification, under the heading “Entries and codes”. For English Literature A the table gives two rows: “Option A WW1” against entry code 7712A, and “Option B Modern times” against 7712B. For English Literature B it gives four: 7717AA for Tragedy and Crime, 7717AB for Tragedy and Politics, 7717BA for Comedy and Crime and 7717BB for Comedy and Politics.

The reason Literature B needs two letters is that it asks a school to choose twice. Its Paper 1, Literary genres, is itself an option — Aspects of tragedy or Aspects of comedy — and its Paper 2, Texts and genres, offers Elements of crime writing or Elements of political and social protest writing. The first letter of the code records the Paper 1 choice and the second records the Paper 2 choice. Literature A has no Paper 1 option at all: every candidate sits Love through the ages, so only the Paper 2 choice needs recording and a single letter does it.

Source: AQA, AS and A-level English Literature A specification version 1.7.1 and AS and A-level English Literature B specification version 1.5.1, both dated 1 October 2025, section 7.1. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

Four codes against two is the sharpest measurable difference between AQA’s two English Literature A-levels, and it is a difference in how much the school decides rather than in how much the student does. Neither arrangement is open to the candidate on the day: the option is a property of the entry the centre makes, and it is settled when that entry is made.

A parent looking at an entry statement will usually see only the one code. AQA states the position plainly: “You only need to make one entry for each qualification – this will cover all the question papers, non-exam assessment and certification.” The component codes below never appear on the entry itself; they appear on the question papers, on the mark schemes and in AQA’s own timetable. If the code on the statement is not one of the six above, the student is not on an A-level — the AS awards use 7711 and the 7716 series instead, and our Year 12 AQA English Literature page covers those.

The two question papers that code selects, and which of them runs for three hours

AQA publishes a key-dates page for each specification, and for the June 2027 series it lists every component by code, with a start time and a duration. Read together, the two pages show something neither specification document says on its own: Literature A and Literature B use the same two exam mornings, in the same order, for the same total amount of writing — and they run the long paper and the short paper the opposite way round.

Source: AQA, key dates for A-level English Literature A (7712) and A-level English Literature B (7717), June 2027 series. Retrieved 26 September 2026. The two exam dates and the submission deadline are also set out on our Year 12 AQA English Literature page.

So a Literature A candidate meets the three-hour paper first and the shorter paper a week later. A Literature B candidate meets the shorter paper first and the three-hour paper a week later. Add the two together and the totals are identical on both routes: 3 hours plus 2 hours 30 minutes. What differs is where the weight falls in that week, and for a Literature B student it falls at the end of it.

The non-exam assessment deadline sits inside the same week on both specifications. AQA gives components 7712/C and 7717/C a submission date of 15 May 2027 — two days after the Paper 1 exams and five days before the Paper 2 exams — and qualifies it immediately: “Schools and colleges may set their own deadlines”. In practice a centre sets an internal cut-off well before that, because it has to mark and internally standardise the work before any mark reaches AQA. A family should ask the school for its own date rather than work back from 15 May 2027.

For a Literature B student that ordering is worth planning around. The heaviest single paper is the last of the three commitments, not the first, and the week between the two exams is not free revision time if the school’s coursework cut-off has not already passed.

Twenty-five marks a question on both specifications — and twice the Shakespeare on Literature B

Underneath the different option names, AQA has built the two specifications to the same arithmetic. Each written paper carries 75 marks and 40% of the A-level. The non-exam assessment carries 50 marks and 20%. Each paper is divided into three sections and every section is worth 25 marks, so a candidate on either route answers six exam questions of 25 marks each.

What differs is what those twelve sections ask. Setting the four A-level papers out side by side makes the one real asymmetry visible, and it is Shakespeare.

Source: AQA, Specification at a glance, section 2.2 of the Literature A (7712) and Literature B (7717) specifications, both version-dated 1 October 2025. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

Literature B names Shakespeare in two of Paper 1’s three sections, which is 50 of that paper’s 75 marks. Literature A examines Shakespeare in one section, which is 25 of its Paper 1’s 75 marks. Fifty marks against twenty-five is exactly twice as much Shakespeare, on papers that are otherwise weighted identically, and it lands on the paper a Literature B candidate sits first.

The unseen material moves in the other direction, and it moves papers rather than doubling. On Literature A the unseen appears on both papers: unseen poetry in Paper 1 Section B and an unseen prose extract in Paper 2 Section B. On Literature B it appears once, as the compulsory opening question of Paper 2. A Literature A student therefore meets an unseen text on 13 May 2027 and again on 20 May 2027; a Literature B student meets one only on 20 May 2027.

Neither pattern makes a specification harder. They are different papers with different set texts, and a mark on one is not comparable with a mark on the other. What the pattern does change is where preparation time earns the most. The two written papers carry 75 raw marks each, so 150 between them: 50 of those 150 are the Shakespeare sections on Literature B, and 50 of them are the two unseen sections on Literature A. On either route that is a third of everything examined in the exam hall.

What a raw mark out of 75 is actually worth once AQA scales it

A mock paper comes back marked out of 75, and it is tempting to add the component marks straight together and compare the result with a published grade boundary. On AQA English Literature that does not work, because the components are not added at face value. Both specifications state the rule in section 5.3: “The marks awarded on the papers will be scaled to meet the weighting of the components. Students’ final marks will be calculated by adding together the scaled marks for each component. Grade boundaries will be set using this total scaled mark.”

Source: AQA, section 5.3 Assessment weightings, Literature A (7712) and Literature B (7717) specifications, both 1 October 2025. The table is identical in both documents. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

Two things follow, and both matter to a Year 13 reading a mock result. The first is that the total is 375 and not the sum of the raw maxima, so a raw mark has to be converted before it can be compared with anything. The second is that a raw mark is not worth the same everywhere: one more raw mark on a written paper adds 2 to the total, and one more raw mark on the non-exam assessment adds 1.5. Marks on the written papers move the needle further, one for one, than marks on the coursework.

This is not a general rule about AQA A-levels and should not be carried across to another subject. It is what the English Literature A and English Literature B specifications say, and both say the same thing. Within English Literature it is also worth knowing that the AS awards are not on this scale: AQA gives each AS paper a scaling factor of one, 50 raw marks each, for a total scaled mark of 100. A Year 12 AS total and a Year 13 A-level total are two different measures and cannot be read against each other.

Which of AQA’s past papers a Year 13 on this code can actually use

AQA publishes its question papers, mark schemes and examiner reports in one filterable library per specification, and the filter is the useful part: it sorts by component code. Listed on 26 September 2026, the 7712 library held 88 question papers, 21 mark schemes and 16 examiner reports. The 7717 library held 65 question papers, 28 mark schemes and 20 examiner reports.

Those totals are not what a single candidate can use, because every Paper 2 question paper is named for its option. AQA titles them in full — “Paper 2A Texts in shared contexts: WW1 and its aftermath” and “Paper 2B Texts in shared contexts: Modern times: literature from 1945 to the present day” — so a student entered as 7712A and a student entered as 7712B are revising from two different sets of papers that share a library.

Restricting the 7717 library to question papers shows the split cleanly: 16 under component 7717/1A, 16 under 7717/1B, 16 under 7717/2A and 17 under 7717/2B. A candidate entered as 7717AA can use the 7717/1A and 7717/2A papers and no others. On the Literature A side the same filter returns 18 question papers under component 7712/1, the paper every candidate sits.

Source: AQA, assessment resources for A-level English Literature A (7712) and A-level English Literature B (7717), counts read from AQA’s own resource-type and component-code filters on 26 September 2026.

There is a second limit on that library, and it is specific to the 2027 series. AQA lists two specification documents on each subject page and labels them by exam series: the updated documents are marked “First exams Summer 2027” and the earlier ones “Last exams Summer 2026”. A Year 13 sitting in May 2027 is working to the updated document — Literature A version 1.7.1 and Literature B version 1.5.1, both dated 1 October 2025 — while every paper in the library above was set under the document whose last exams were summer 2026.

That gap has a concrete consequence for anyone studying one of AQA’s recent additions. In AQA’s own words, “we have added three optional new texts to A-level English Literature A (7712) for 2027” and “two optional new texts to A-level English Literature B (7717) for 2027”, in each case “for first exam in 2027”. A student whose school has taken one of those five titles has no past exam question on it, no mark scheme written against it and no examiner report describing how it was answered. The titles themselves, and which option each sits under, are set out on our AQA A-level English Literature page; the series checked throughout here is June 2027. For how the two specifications compare as courses rather than as entries, see our A-level English Literature page.

How Leading Tuition works with a Year 13 AQA English Literature student

Our expert A-level English Literature tutors work from the entry code first. Knowing that a student is 7717AB rather than 7717BA settles whether their Paper 1 Shakespeare sits inside Aspects of tragedy or Aspects of comedy, which of the four Paper 2 option papers is theirs, and which 25-mark section each essay is being written for — before any discussion of technique begins. It also settles which past papers are worth the student’s time: on Literature B that is the papers under two component codes, 16 of them apiece, rather than the whole library of 65.

From there the work is ordinary and specific. Sessions are built around the three 25-mark sections of each paper, because that is the unit the marks are awarded in: a passage-based Shakespeare question and a comparative essay are different pieces of writing with different demands, and practising them as one blurred skill is the commonest reason a capable reader stalls in the middle mark bands. For a Literature B student that means a disproportionate share of time on Shakespeare, because 50 of Paper 1’s 75 marks are there.

The non-exam assessment is handled as the school’s piece of work, not ours. It is teacher-marked and moderated by AQA, and a centre sets its own deadline ahead of the 15 May 2027 submission date, so our role is to build the independent critical and comparative writing the task rewards and to keep it moving against whatever date the school has set.

What Parents Say

DP

Deborah Prior

★★★★★

Confidence and progress

My son was low in confidence after COVID and the gaps in learning were building up. Using this service helped plug those gaps, rebuild confidence, and improve his ability to learn properly again.

NI

Nicola

★★★★★

Amazing tutors!

We arranged maths and English tuition ahead of GCSEs and both tutors were brilliant. My daughter's grades improved, and by results day she achieved two grades higher than in her mock exams.

S

Saifan Khan

★★★★★

Great Teaching and Focused Learning

I attended an English bootcamp with Leading Tuition and the experience was excellent. The teacher gave focused attention to the small group while keeping the lessons interactive and engaging.

See more reviews on Trustpilot

Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, read on 3 October 2026, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades.

Students arrive on both specifications and at every stage of Year 13, including after a disappointing mock. Where a mock has been marked, the first job is usually the conversion in the section above: a raw mark out of 75 is not a grade on its own, and turning it into a scaled figure out of 375 is what makes the rest of the year plannable. If that is where your Year 13 is, a free consultation is the quickest way to establish which entry code they are on and what the mock actually says.

Frequently asked questions — Year 13 AQA English Literature in the 2027 series

Reviewed September 2026: entry codes, component codes, durations, scaling factors and resource counts checked against AQA’s own 7712 and 7717 specification documents, key-dates pages and assessment-resources filters on 26 September 2026.