AQA GCSE English Literature 8702: papers, timings and marks

AQA GCSE English Literature (specification code 8702) is examined by two written papers, both closed book, both sat at the end of the course. Paper 1 is 1 hour 45 minutes and worth 64 marks, or 40% of the GCSE. Paper 2 is 2 hours 15 minutes and worth 96 marks, or 60%. That is the whole qualification: no coursework, no tiers, one grade scale from 1 to 9.

Below is every figure you might be looking for, checked against AQA’s own specification, question papers and mark schemes in September 2026 and linked at the end. After the reference part there is a section on how the mark totals translate into minutes in the exam room, which is the bit AQA does not publish and the bit that actually changes what you do.

What is in AQA GCSE English Literature Paper 1?

Paper 1 is Shakespeare and the 19th-century novel. You get 1 hour 45 minutes, the maximum mark is 64, and it is worth 40% of the GCSE. You answer one question from Section A and one from Section B, and the front of the paper tells you not to use a dictionary.

• Section A is Shakespeare. There is one question on each of the six set plays and you answer on the play you have studied. The question is worth 30 marks, with a further 4 marks available for AO4 on top. An extract from the play is printed on the paper, and the question typically asks you to write about the extract and then about the play as a whole.
• Section B is the 19th-century novel. One question per set novel, worth 30 marks, again with a printed extract. There are no AO4 marks in Section B, which is worth knowing before you spend the last five minutes of the exam proofreading the wrong essay.

The paper is worth 64 marks in total. AQA states the AO split for the 30-mark questions as AO1 12, AO2 12 and AO3 6.

What is in Paper 2?

Paper 2 is Modern texts and poetry: 2 hours 15 minutes, 96 marks, 60% of the GCSE. It is the longer paper and the one with three sections, and you have to answer in all three.

• Section A is modern prose or drama, worth 30 marks plus 4 marks for AO4. You get a choice of two questions on your set text and answer one. Unlike Paper 1 there is no extract, so this section is entirely from memory.
• Section B is the poetry anthology, worth 30 marks. You answer one question on the cluster you have studied from Poems Past and Present. One named poem is printed on the paper and you compare it with another poem of your choice from the same cluster.
• Section C is unseen poetry, worth 32 marks, and it is the only section where you must answer both questions. The first is worth 24 marks and asks you to analyse a poem you have never seen. The second is worth 8 marks and asks you to compare the methods of that poem with a second unseen poem. AQA’s mark scheme assesses AO1 and AO2 in the 24-mark question, and AO2 only in the 8-mark one: the shorter question is about method and effect, not about what the poems mean.

What do AO1, AO2, AO3 and AO4 actually mean?

The assessment objectives are set for every English Literature GCSE, so they are the same wording whichever board you sit. AQA’s scheme of assessment gives them as follows, in plainer terms:

• AO1 is reading, understanding and responding: a clear argument of your own, supported with quotations. The most marks of any single objective after AO2.
• AO2 is analysing language, form and structure, and using subject terminology where it helps. This is the largest objective in the qualification, which is why “how the writer does it” beats “what happens” every time.
• AO3 is context: the relationship between the text and the circumstances it was written in. It is worth much less than most students assume.
• AO4 is your own vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation.

Where are the SPaG marks?

This is the single most commonly missed piece of structure in 8702, so it is worth stating flatly. AO4 is assessed in Section A of each paper, and nowhere else. That means the Shakespeare question on Paper 1 and the modern text question on Paper 2. Both carry 4 marks for AO4 in addition to the 30 marks for answering the question, so there are 8 AO4 marks in the whole GCSE.

AQA prints the rule on the front of the paper and next to the question itself, where it appears as a separate line reading AO4 [4 marks] under the 30. The mark scheme for Paper 1 states it directly: AO4 will be assessed on Section A only.

Four marks is 2.5% of the whole qualification, which sounds trivial until you notice that it is awarded for something entirely within your control. Leaving three or four minutes to reread your Section A answer for sentence variety, spelling and punctuation is one of the few things in this exam that pays reliably.

How long should you spend on each section?

AQA does not publish timings per section, and it does not have to, because the marks imply them. Divide the minutes by the marks and you get a rate, then give each section its share.

• Paper 1: 105 minutes for 64 marks, which is about 1.6 minutes a mark. Section A is 34 marks, so roughly 55 minutes. Section B is 30 marks, so roughly 50 minutes. Those add up to the full paper, so in practice take five minutes off each for reading the extract and planning, and treat 50 and 45 as the writing time.
• Paper 2: 135 minutes for 96 marks, or about 1.4 minutes a mark. That gives Section A around 48 minutes, Section B around 42, and Section C around 45. The interesting number is inside Section C: the 24-mark question is worth roughly 34 minutes and the 8-mark question roughly 11. Students routinely give the second unseen question far more than that, because it feels like a proper comparison question, and lose marks on the anthology or modern text as a result.

Two practical conclusions fall out of the arithmetic. First, Paper 2 Section A is, with Paper 1 Section A, the joint highest-value single answer in the qualification at 34 marks with no extract to lean on, so it is the one worth having quotations ready for. Second, if you are going to run out of time anywhere, make sure it is not in Section C of Paper 2, where 32 marks sit at the end of a long paper and tired students leave the 8-marker blank.

Some students find it easier to do the sections out of order and start with the one they are most confident on, which is allowed. The answer booklet has space for all of it, and examiners mark by question number, not by the order you wrote in.

If you want to practise a specific text against this structure, Aicademy’s AQA GCSE English Literature lessons cover the most widely taught choices and the exam technique for each section, and are free to read without an account. For the actual past papers and mark schemes, go straight to AQA’s assessment resources. They are free, they are the real thing, and no revision site can improve on them.

Which texts can come up?

Your school picks one text per section from AQA’s lists, so you sit a fraction of what follows. These are the options as published by AQA and checked in September 2026.

• Paper 1, Section A (Shakespeare), six plays: Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar.
• Paper 1, Section B (the 19th-century novel), seven texts: Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations, Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four.
• Paper 2, Section A (modern prose or drama): the drama options are An Inspector Calls, Blood Brothers, DNA, A Taste of Honey, Princess & The Hustler and Leave Taking. The prose options are Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, Anita and Me, Pigeon English, My Name is Leon and the AQA anthology Telling Tales. The last three drama and prose additions were first taught from 2023 and first examined in 2025, so older revision guides will not mention them.
• Paper 2, Section B (the poetry anthology): Poems Past and Present now offers three clusters of 15 poems: Love and relationships, Power and conflict and Worlds and lives, the last of which was also first taught from 2023 and first examined in 2025. Power and conflict remains the most widely taught, but check which cluster your class actually studied before you buy a revision guide.

Is the exam closed book?

Yes. AQA describes the specification as assessed in an untiered, closed book context, so you cannot bring copies of your texts into either exam. In practice that is less brutal than it sounds, because AQA prints the extract for the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions and prints the named poem for the anthology question. The sections with nothing printed are Paper 2 Section A, the modern text, and the second poem in the anthology comparison, which is why quotation learning matters most for those two.

Every number on this page comes from AQA’s specification, question papers and mark schemes, all free and linked below, so you can check the lot against the source.

Aicademy is ours, and its AQA GCSE English Literature and English Language lessons are free to read without an account. A free account also lets you generate your own lessons, quizzes and flashcards for whichever set text you are stuck on.