April 23, 2026 by Doug McCurry from BooBook Education

What did you think of the comments on the Section A topics in the exam report for 2025?

On the whole I have the impression that Section A in recent years has had fewer dud questions of the kind that offer topics for discussion that are non-issues or that are awkwardly framed issues. But the Section A topics have changed markedly in recent years to be narrower and as a result they are in general more awkward for students to deal with in my view than those of earlier years. Having recently read all the exam reports for the last 25 years it is not clear why there has been this narrowing of questions in recent years or the rationale for it.

The report for 2025 states in the opening of the Section A discussion that the questions are focused on ‘the ideas and associated values that an author presented in a selected text’. It is implied that it is a virtue that the topics are not broad and are focused on the ‘specified ideas and values of the author’. On the other hand, the ideas and values of a writer are presented in terms of generalized and abstract ‘themes’.

We are also given the following comment that recurs in recent reports.

‘As always, Section A offered multiple entry points for students. Every student had the opportunity to use one entry point to demonstrate the skills they had developed.’

I cannot satisfactorily construe this comment and wonder how it relates to the comments about specifically focused questions. I don’t understand in what sense giving students a narrow question about a generalized theme and emphasizing the importance of discussion relating to the ‘specified topic’ can be said to be offering multiple points of entry to them. There seems to me an incipient contradiction between the claim that narrow topics about the specific ‘ideas and values of author’ and the claim that the questions offer ‘multiple entry points for students’. It seems to me that students are given a narrow and specified topic that is the only point of entry to the text.

The problem with these narrowly abstract thematic questions in that they are likely to elicit abstract conceptual discussion rather than encouraging students to produce a grounded reading of the text. The nature of the set questions means that students have the problem of how to get from an abstract thematic discussion of the question to a discussion of the text itself. The current questions also tend to set up specific issues (‘truth’ seems to the dominant issue for 2025) and students are in effect to focus on this issue rather than the text.

Mention is made in the report of the value of ‘topic interpretation strategies’, but it is not clear what these strategies are from the discussion of the questions or the approaches to them.

In one sense the report of 2025 is rigorously definitive (as was that of 2024) but for my part I don’t feel the rigor is focused on the issues that are uncertain and about which guidance would be very welcome.

Types of questions

We are told there are three types of topics: the propositional, the quotation and the direct.

The obvious type is the direct question, and these are actually the newest of the kinds. What have been traditionally called Section A questions are actually statements followed by one of three directions now called ‘command terms’.

• Discuss. 
• Do you agree?
• To what extent do you agree?

We are told the following about these directions.

‘Students who understood the difference between these command terms were better able to address these propositional essay questions.’

The differences between these command terms are not self-evident.
What difference is there between: ‘Do you agree?’ and ‘To what extent do you agree?’
It would seem reasonable to discuss the extent to which you agree in discussing whether you agree.
And presumably a response to a ‘Discuss’ direction could consider whether and to what extent one agrees with a statement.
These different command terms seem the proverbial distinctions without differences.

Are the different directions supposed to signal something about the topic?
If so, it is hard to see any pattern to the distribution of the directions.
Do the invitations actually indicate that different kinds of question aim to elicit different kinds of responses?
Discuss can mean elaborate or explain but it might also mean do you agree or to what extent do you agree.

Another recent change to the traditional propositional formula is what are called the quotation questions in which is a brief quote is followed by a question or by a statement with or without a direction. This innovation adds significantly to the complexity and uncertainty of the assessment, and we are offered no rationale to justify this complexity.

In respect to these quotation questions we are told that:

‘Students needed to understand the conventions associated with addressing other types of questions to be well prepared for this section.’

But it is not clear what conventions are referred to. Are they the following?

‘Students were not obligated to use the quotation in a specific way. They were free to integrate it into their response in a way that related to the reading they presented.’

Are we to infer that the quotation must be integrated into the discussion in some way, but the significance of the quote in the discussion is immaterial?
If this is the ‘convention’ then this inclusion of the quote introducing a proposition or question opens up some slippery issues.
Is it satisfactory for a student to do no more than use the quote as an example or illustration for something during the discussion?
What if the student does not use the quotation or shows in trying to use it that they misattribute the quote, do not understand it, do not understand its significance, and or do not see how it relates to the actual question or proposition?
Would a student gain credit by exploring the relationship between the quote and the question or proposition?
Wouldn’t the second use of the quote be a much harder (and more dangerous) task than the former?
Would a student get extra credit for the latter?

We have been told by the Executive Examiner that students never lose marks, because holistic marking can never be a matter of deducting marks. But is it the case that to gain marks students must have done more merely than use the quote in a quote question, and that they gain more marks for using the quote in a way that shows that they understand it and how it relates to the set question or proposition? We are given no guidance in this matter.

The use of quotation questions was increased significantly in recent years. As the quotes are the only parts of any current questions that relate specifically to the text itself, they offer an apparent diversification of the blankly thematic questions that make no reference to setting, plot or character. The quote questions also seem to be about the texts rather than the writer, but the lack of clarity about the expectations built into quote questions make them a problem.

The topics are grouped by invitation into three kinds in the report.

• Explore the relationship between concerns/ concepts presented by the text
• Drill into a specific aspect of a concern/concept presented by the text
• Consideration of concept/idea development in the text (how questions)

This typology shows that topics are conceived in terms of concepts (that is in terms of themes), that they can include one or more concepts, and that questions may be about the relationship between concepts. As I have argued in another blog, I think questions are best when they arise out of asking about what happens, to whom and why in a text rather than conceived as and focusing on a theme.

The how question quandary

The notion of a ‘how’ question adds another complication to the current assessment. How does the following how question from the 2025 paper differ from the same issue in more conventional phrasing that follows?

• How does Bronte highlight the danger of acting on emotion rather than reason in Jane Eyre?

OR

• Bronte highlights the danger of acting on emotion rather than reason in Jane Eyre.

In my experience most students treat the how form of the question which was the set in the exam as though it was the second form of the question.

We are told in the report that how questions ask student to explore a text by discussing ‘how a concept/idea was explored in a text both by discussing the way ideas were introduced and developed, and by exploring the way in which these ideas were conveyed by the author.’ The implied view in this statement is that writers (particularly the writers of fiction and personal narrative) begin with a concept/idea and find ways of introducing and developing those ideas. Few writers would accept the idea that they have a concept and their activity is to find a way of introducing and developing that idea. Unfortunately, many students now write about texts in Section A as though writers begin with concepts and the challenge for readers is to unearth those concepts.

Focusing on concepts is a very complicated and difficult approach to a fictional text, and most of the set texts are fiction.
What happens when students treat the how question as a straight propositional question?
Is there a limitation on the credit available to students who do not discuss how in a how question?
How many students treat how questions as straight propositions?
How are markers directed to deal with responses to how questions that do not discuss how?

Some comments in the report are focused on language used in questions. It is implied that differences in verbs used in questions, for instance, are significant. I would classify the verbs identified in the questions them as follows.

Given the avowed focus of the questions on the views and values of the creator it is not surprising that there is more difference in the verbs that attribute an attitude or view than those that are more descriptive. As one’s attention is drawn to these different words, is one to think there is a meaningful difference between a text depicting and demonstrating?
Are we to see a difference between showing and suggesting?
What is the difference between challenging and condemning?

While the writer died towards end of the C20th, the creator of text is clearly resurrected in recent exam questions because they are resolutely about the views and values of the creator. Reading in Section A is about determining the views and values of the writer and about a quarter of the questions name the creator.

The current questions are thematic in being generalized, abstracted and conceptual rather than concrete or specific because they eschew the usual elements of setting, plot and character.

Some of the current questions are much more difficult than they should be in that students can be caught in the abstract generalities focused on in the questions, or they have to find a way of applying an idea/theme to a narrative. In some cases the questions become a test of interpreting the question rather relating a proposition to the text or offering a reading the text.

With these issues in mind, I will make a few comments on the specific questions of 2025.

I am not an armchair critic of exam papers. I know well how difficult it is to write good exam papers, but a high stakes public exam deserves rigorous critique.

The complexity of writing text questions of the thematic kind now used in the exam can be seen in the questions about short stories. It is very difficult to pose a generalization about a group of stories even though they have the same author.

The following questions are those for Hadley and Malouf in 2025 de-identified.
Can guess which was used for which text?

• In XXX YYY suggests that everyday life can be significant.
• How does XXX depict the consequences of crossing boundaries?
• Relationships act as catalysts for self-discovery in XXX.
• XXX demonstrates that it is harder to understand yourself than it is to understand others.

It seems to me that these topics are no more appropriate for one text than for the other.

Similarly, how many set texts could the following Flames question have been used for?

• In XXX, YYY condemns the isolation caused by modern society.

In some respects good text questions can be obvious, and it can be difficult to do anything much with them other than to agree and elaborate, as with the following.

'Blood calls to blood.'
In The Erratics, Laveau-Harvie highlights the tension between family obligation and self-preservation.
Discuss.

It might be claimed that this question is not obvious in that it refers to what is described as a tense relationship between two ‘concepts’ that can be ‘resolved’. The difficulty of making such a claim for the question is that while the tension referred to does underpin the text, it is not resolved by or in the text.

This question also shows the challenge of how a quote relates to a proposition. The quote about blood calling to blood relates to the notions of family obligation and self-preservation, but there is considerable likelihood that a student will not see or understand the relationship between the quote and the terms of the question. Although they might follow what we are told are the conventions for such questions by using it in the discussion (to mean something like the conflict is bloody) they are in danger of showing that they do not understand the quote or the terms of the question. How are markers to deal with this deficiency caused by the question?

The same challenge is built into the following question with the additional complication of it being a how question.

‘They're free, they've been taught how to fish, but no one will give them a fishing rod.'
How does Born a Crime demonstrate the difficulties of escaping inequality?

One can see how this side comment quoted from the text can be interpreted as meaning that it is very difficult to escape inequality, but this is not a helpful focus for students. The most extraordinary and significant aspect of the text is the way it shows that Noah can escape inequality.

It is not satisfactory that there has been no reference to the comparative difficulty of different questions, particularly the difficulty of the new how and quote questions. The traditional exams based on diverse propositions pose much fewer problems and dangers for students and for markers than the current approach of thematic and quote questions.

It is unfortunate that a significant number of current question foreground (or ‘highlight’ in current parlance) the creator of a text because it shifts focus from the text. But then this focus is consistent with the stated view that Section A is about the identification and interpretation of the views and values of the creator of a text.

In the past the major weakness of student responses to texts questions was giving little attention to the set question and instead telling the story. In line with the current emphasis of the course, the major weakness of current student responses is the simplistic reduction of texts to messages or morals as a response to thematic questions. Students now commonly treat texts as lectures, sermons or bottles with messages in them. As we see in the verbs used in questions, the emphasis is on the way creators celebrate, glorify, warn, cry out, challenge and condemn.

None of the texts for study (including the non-fiction) can be fairly summarized in such blanket terms. The approach to text offered in the study and the exam questions effectively promotes such simplistic reductions to the creator’s purpose or intention. Any text worthy of a place in the study cannot be fairly summarized by simply attributing a purpose or intention to the creator.

The most egregious example of this reductionism in the paper of 2025 is the following.

To what extent does Shakespeare mock social expectations in Twelfth Night?

It might be claimed that this crass and clumsy question was intended to provoke dissent. (This is the usual excuse for poorly focused questions.) But in my view, it is poor exam writing try to provoke dissent because most students assume (on the basis of most questions) that a statement in the question in more or less true, and so they will agree with it. Fortunately there are few questions that are as poor as the one stating the Twelfth Night is mocking social expectations.

But there are problems with a significant number of questions that wrong foot students. The following seems to me examples of such ill-focused or awkward questions.

How does Bronte highlight the danger of acting on emotion rather than reason in Jane Eyre?
The world of My Brilliant Career is harshly unforgiving.

Leaving aside the quandary of the how question, the claim presented in the Bronte question has to at least be qualified and for my part it would be contradicted. The story does not show the danger of acting on emotion, it shows the nobility of acting on emotion submitted to reason.
Describing the world of the My Brilliant Career as harsh is reasonable but it is hard to see any meaningful sense in which it is unforgiving as distinct from being harsh.

There are some questions where the theme presented as a topic is inaccurate or poorly focused.
The following propositions have to be qualified at least and should really be rejected in my view.

Love and destruction are inseparable in Flames.
Jane Eyre is primarily a novel about the pursuit of personal freedom.
In My Brilliant Career, choice is a privilege.
Ghost Wall warns of the danger of glorifying the past.
Go, Went, Gone demonstrates that there are more similarities than differences in human experiences.

Merely illustrating these propositions will wrong foot students because they do not adequately describe the text.

Some set questions are about things other than the text. The following is poorly focused and too far from the text.

Rainbow's End shows that lasting change requires more than individual effort.

What happens in Rainbow’s End is not about how to achieve temporary or lasting change.

The thematic focus of the questions that eschew reference to what happens to whom and why means that that many questions are inappropriately abstract and philosophic. The following question is inappropriately philosophic.

To what extent is revenge a form of justice in High Ground?

The question is about notions of justice rather than the story presented.
The acts of revenge in the story seem futile and self-destructive, but the issue of revenge and justice is not canvassed in the film. It is not a philosophical meditation or debate.
The focus of this questions gives students the problem of getting from an abstract issue of justice (in a story showing gross and obvious injustice) to what happens in the film and what it suggests. They have to translate the terms of the question as best they can into the terms of the story.

In conclusion I would offer the following as a good pair of questions from 2025 that can be said to offer an opportunity for a sophisticated kind of discussion and a ‘resolution’. Given the popularity of the film, it is most fortunate for all concerned that the Sunset Boulevard questions are probably the best pair in the set. Both are focused on central issues, and neither is a blank proposition that one can do nothing with but agree. And significantly neither question is conceptual in focus.

To what extent is Sunset Boulevard about the loss of control?

Those who read the proposition as a matter of tracing how some characters lose control during the film will not be dangerously wrong footed. Loss of control is clearly an issue in the scenario but there is room for qualification of the statement in that the main characters never really have control to lose.

In Sunset Boulevard, Wilder suggests that individuals can be both victims and villains.

This second is a good question because it is about the characters rather than an abstracted theme, and as such contrasts with most of the other questions. The notion of characters as both victims and victimizers is central to the story but those who question the notion that any of the characters can be described as villains would make a sophisticated qualification. While the main characters are victims and in a sense victimizers, they are not villains.