Is GCSE English Literature Hard?

Reviewed by: Deb Orrock

Published

28 April 2025

Illustration of a pondering woman with text: "Is GCSE English Literature Hard? A Teacher's Perspective" on a beige background with book icons.

Contents

Literature from hundreds of years ago. Poetry that you’ve never seen before on your exam paper. Essays, essays, essays. And Shakespeare? On the face of it, GCSE English Literature is very challenging. However, with the right approach, studying English Literature can be stress-free and even joyful

I have taught GCSE English Literature for over 10 years. In that time, I have helped hundreds of students to succeed in — and enjoy — their English Literature GCSE course (believe it or not, many of them ended up loving Shakespeare!).

In this article, we’ll explore why some students believe that GCSE English Literature is hard, and we’ve included some tips and approaches that will make the course much more manageable.

So, is GCSE English Literature hard?

Statistically, GCSE English Literature is one of the harder GCSE courses in which to achieve top marks: only 3.4 percent of candidates in the summer 2024 exams achieved a Grade 9. You can see this illustrated in the graph below (the further to the right a subject is, the harder it is to achieve a Grade 9, relative to other subjects):

Line graph comparing Grade 9 difficulty across subjects for years Y19, Y22, Y23. It shows a general increase, with Computing highlighted.

Graph showing grade 9 difficulty for different subjects (source: Ofqual, 2024)

However, if we look at average (mean) grades, GCSE English Literature comes out much more positively. The average grade of an English Literature student is higher than that of a typical Maths or History student, for example. The data indicates that English Literature is a fairly typical course in terms of average grade, but gaining those top grades is particularly challenging:

Line graph showing weighted mean grades for subjects over three years (Y10, Y22, Y23). Polish has the highest grades; Computing has the lowest.

Graph showing mean grades for different subjects (source: Ofqual, 2024)

What makes GCSE English Literature difficult?

Many students assume that GCSE English Literature is hard, and at first, it can definitely appear to be difficult. The sheer number of set texts (including what seems like an overwhelming amount of poetry) combined with the fact that you’re largely assessed through essay questions, means that GCSE is a huge (and often daunting) step up from Key Stage 3.

Shakespeare

Whatever exam board you’re with (AQA, Edexcel, Eduqas or OCR), studying a Shakespeare play is a fundamental (and compulsory) part of the GCSE English Literature course. The first time my students opened up their Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet texts, a lot of them would stare at the lines in disbelief! Not only is the language 400 years old, but most of the lines are written as poetry. It’s almost like learning a new language.

Large number of set texts to cover

Depending on your exam board, you may have as many as three whole texts, alongside 15 poems, to cover at GCSE. That’s a lot to cover in the classroom, let alone revise.

Most of the exam is “closed book”

Up to GCSE, English tests may have involved the use of your texts (perhaps even annotated with your useful notes). Apart from some short extracts that will be printed on the exam papers, the GCSE rules state that students can’t access their set texts in the exam room. This means that you need to know your texts incredibly well, and even memorise some quotations.

English Literature is an essay-based subject

One of the most daunting things about GCSE English Literature is that pretty much every exam question is an essay. This means that — unlike maths or science subjects, for example, where you have 30 or 40 different questions — in English Literature, you may only answer two questions in a 2-hour exam. And sometimes you won’t even have a choice of questions to choose from; for some units, you have to answer the one question that has been set.

Multiple assessment objectives tested in each question

Because some exam papers are made up of only one or two essay questions, examiners are testing your ability to do many things at once. This means that, often, an English Literature essay needs to:

Answer the question
Include textual references (quotes)
Show understanding of the set text as a whole
Analyse the author’s choices
Understand a text in its own historical, social and/or literary context

Examiners will be testing you on all of these skills, so you have to remember to include all of the above to get top marks. And, to top it all off, you may have to do all of that while also comparing two texts!

Unseen poetry

In my time in the classroom, the thing that filled students with the most dread was “unseen” poetry: as part of the final exams, many GCSE English Literature courses include an essay question on a poem that students will never have come across before. Analysing the set text poetry is one of the most challenging parts of the course, so tackling unseen poetry is another challenge altogether.

How to overcome the challenges of GCSE English Literature

Clearly, GCSE English Literature has its challenges. However, with a strategic approach, and dedication and hard work, any student can overcome these difficulties. Here are my top tips:

Understand the exam

The first thing I always did with my students was to show them what their exam papers looked like. How many exam papers? How many essay questions? How many marks for each?

This may sound like a strange, even intimidating, thing to do in a student’s very first GCSE English Literature lesson, but it is an approach backed by research.

According to the Education Endowment Fund’s guide to metacognition and self-regulated learning, understanding how you are assessed — and your strengths and weaknesses in terms of the skills you will be tested on — is one of the most effective teaching techniques.

That’s why I also made sure all of my students not only knew their mark schemes really well, but they could accurately mark their own work, too.

Really get to know your set texts

There is no “correct” way to get to know your set texts. If you’re finding the language of, say, Macbeth difficult, try watching a film version of it. Alternatively, there are some great graphic novel adaptations of the GCSE set texts, clips of film or TV versions on YouTube, or you could even try to see stage versions of plays (either in person or online).

When you watch these versions, try to point out differences from the original, as this will consolidate your understanding of the text.

You may find some of your texts harder than others. However, the genius of Shakespeare is that — although the language may be challenging — the ideas he explores are as relevant today as they ever were. As a result, the vast majority of my students loved delving into ideas such as gender roles, power, fate and race.

This is true of all of your other set texts too: they have been chosen because they invite discussion about some fascinating ideas. Debating these issues is one of the most effective learning strategies, so setting up study groups and arguing over texts is definitely an exam winner!

Use learning strategies backed by cognitive science

With so much to cover in the GCSE English Literature course, using the most efficient and effective learning and revision methods is essential. That’s why I always showed my students the latest scientific research on learning techniques. Here are some of the worst, and best, methods:

Ineffective learning techniques	Effective learning techniques
Highlighting or underlining text	Self-testing at regular intervals
Re-reading texts	Self-explanation (connecting new information to what you already know)
Summarising large chunks of text	Distributed practice (spacing your learning out, and not cramming)

Learn quotes based on quality, not quantity

As GCSE English Literature exams are “closed-book”, you’ll have to memorise quotes to use in your essays. However, memorising long chunks of text is not only time-consuming, it’s also less effective than learning more, shorter quotations: you’ll cover far more themes, and characters, doing this.

Gradually build up your essay-writing skills

Writing a full 30-mark essay in 45 minutes can feel daunting. But remember: you only need to be able to do this well by a month or two before your exams.

Up until that point, don’t expect to be able to hit the highest levels of the mark scheme, and it’s totally fine if your teacher doesn’t set full essays until months into the GCSE course.

You’ll still be developing the skills you need, like writing successful introductions or topic sentences, or incorporating context into your analysis. It won’t all come at once, but that’s okay.

Ask for help

Possibly the most important piece of advice I can give is that if you’re struggling, reach out for support. Teachers like me love it when students want to get better, and are always happy to help.

Some of my very best students weren’t the ones who “got it” straight away; they were the ones who found English Literature challenging at first and came to me for help. After some work together, plus their determination and practice, they ended up with Grade 9s.

For more information on staying stress-free during your revision, check out our Free Exam Anxiety Relief Kit.

Frequently asked questions

How hard is it to get a 9 in GCSE English Literature?

Attaining a Grade 9 in GCSE English Literature is harder than in most other subjects. However, with the right approach, and plenty of practice, many students do achieve a Grade 9 (approximately 20,000 16-year-olds achieve one each year). Here at Save My Exams, we have a suite of exam-board specific revision resources, including full, annotated Grade 9 model answers to help you achieve that top grade.

Is GCSE English Literature hard to pass?

While it is difficult to achieve a Grade 9 in the subject, the good news is that English Literature is relatively easy to achieve a pass (a Grade 4). As you can see in the graph below, compared to other GCSE courses, it is one of the easiest to pass (the further on the left a subject, the easier it is to secure a Grade 4 relative to other subjects):

Line graph showing Grade 4 difficulty in GW across Y19, Y22, Y23 for various subjects, with English highlighted. Difficulty ranges from -5 to 5.

Graph showing grade 4 difficulty for different subjects (source: Ofqual, 2024)

Is English Literature a good option for GCSE?

As most schools teach both English Literature and English Language, and because English Literature is one of the core GCSEs that makes up something called the EBacc (a selection of subjects the government uses to compare schools), most students will be automatically entered to study GCSE English Literature by their schools.

If it isn’t, I couldn’t recommend it more highly: it develops your skills in higher-order thinking, evaluation and analysis, which are useful for further study or at any place of work.

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