—·Exam Boards
Four exam boards set Macbeth. They do not set the same exam, and the differences are big enough to change what you teach in March.
Context is worth six marks on AQA and nothing at all on Eduqas. Edexcel gives no marks for accuracy in this section. Only OCR offers a choice of question.
Read from the four boards’ own question papers and mark schemes, current at the date of this article. Every figure below is named and sourced in full at the foot of the page.
A teacher who has taught Macbeth for a decade, then moves school, can find the exam has changed underneath them. The play is the same. The assessment objectives are the regulator’s, and are worded identically for every board. What differs is the question — how many parts it has, how long it runs, whether there is a choice, and which objectives are actually being marked.
Four boards, four question shapes
AQA 8702
One question, no choice
An extract is printed, and the task is to write about the extract and then the play as a whole. Thirty marks, with four more for accuracy. Closed book, about fifty minutes.
- 34section
- 6context
- 4accuracy
Pearson Edexcel 1ET0
One question in two parts
Part (a) is the printed extract, twenty marks for AO2 alone. Part (b) goes elsewhere in the play, twenty marks — fifteen for AO1 and five for AO3. About fifty-five minutes, split evenly.
- 40section
- 5context
- —accuracy
WJEC Eduqas Component 1
One question in two parts
Part (a) is the extract, fifteen marks. Part (b) is an essay across the whole play, twenty marks, with five more for accuracy. Both parts are marked for AO1 and AO2. About twenty minutes on (a), forty on (b).
- 40section
- —context
- 5accuracy
OCR J352
A choice of two
Either an extract-based question reaching into the whole play, or a discursive question with no extract at all. Thirty-four marks across AO1, AO2 and AO3 together, with six more for accuracy. About forty-five minutes, inside a two-hour paper shared with poetry.
- 40section
- in one levelcontext
- 6accuracy
The section figure is the whole Shakespeare question, accuracy included. A dash means the objective is not assessed there at all.
Three differences that change the teaching
Context is worth six marks, five marks, or nothing
AO3 — “show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written” — carries six marks on AQA and five on Edexcel, where it belongs to part (b) and not to the extract. On OCR it sits inside a single level alongside AO1 and AO2 rather than being counted separately. Eduqas does not assess AO3 on this component at all.
That is not a difference in emphasis. A department teaching to Eduqas that spends a fortnight on the Gunpowder Plot and James I is spending it on something the mark scheme has no line for. A department teaching to AQA that skips it is leaving six marks on the table. The same lesson is right in one school and wrong in another.
Only one board gives no marks for accuracy here
Spelling, punctuation and grammar are worth four marks on AQA, five on Eduqas and six on OCR. Edexcel awards none in this section.
So a revision lesson on accuracy is worth six marks on OCR — as much as context is worth on AQA — and worth nothing at all, in this section, on Edexcel.
Only one board offers a choice
AQA, Edexcel and Eduqas all print an extract and require candidates to work from it. OCR offers a choice between an extract-based question and a discursive one with no extract.
That is a decision a candidate makes under time pressure, and choosing between two questions is a skill the other three never test. It has to be taught, and it can only be taught where it exists.
What follows for a scheme of work
The play is taught much the same way everywhere: closely, slowly, with the text open. None of the above changes that. What it changes is the last third of the course, where teaching turns towards the paper.
The practical consequence is that a single model answer is wrong for three boards out of four. An answer written to AQA’s one long question does not show a student on Edexcel how to spend twenty marks on an extract without straying outside it, and does not show a student on Eduqas what a part (b) essay looks like when context earns nothing. Worked answers have to be written per board, in the shape the board asks for, or they teach the wrong habit convincingly.
The timing practice differs too. Fifty minutes on one question is a different discipline from fifty-five split evenly between two, and different again from twenty minutes then forty. A student who has only ever written the long version will overrun part (a) and lose the marks in part (b).
Where to start
Find out which board your department is actually entered for — not the one the previous head of English taught — and read the Section A mark scheme before planning the spring term. Every document below is published free by the board itself.
Sources
- AQA GCSE English Literature 8702, Paper 1 question paper and mark scheme, June 2023
- Pearson Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0, Paper 1 question paper 2020 and mark scheme June 2023
- WJEC Eduqas GCSE English Literature, Component 1 Shakespeare materials and mark scheme June 2022
- OCR GCSE English Literature J352, Component 02 sample assessment material, June 2022 paper and Shakespeare mark scheme
Assessment objective wording is quoted from the regulator’s subject content, which is common to all four boards. Board materials were read on 5 September 2026; a specification change after that date is not reflected here.
Macbeth: The Complete Teacher Pack is thirty lessons in six units, with a knowledge organiser for every unit, the key speeches printed for annotation, and worked answers written for each board’s own mark scheme — in two parts where the board asks two questions.
There are packs on the same pattern for A Christmas Carol, An Inspector Calls and Blood Brothers, and everything else for the subject is on the English page.