Pearson Edexcel Level 3 GCE

Mark Scheme (Results) Summer 2025 Pearson Edexcel Level 3 GCE in English Literature (8ET0) Paper 2: Prose Edexcel and BTEC Qualifications Edexcel and BTEC qualifications are awarded by Pearson, the UK’s largest awarding body. We provide a wide rang of qualifications including academic, vocational, occupational and specific programmes for employers. For furth information visit our qualifications websites at or . Alternatively, you can get touch with us using the details on our contact us page at Pearson: helping people progress, everywhere Pearson aspires to be the world’s leading learning company. Our aim is to help everyone progress in their live through education. We believe in every kind of learning, for all kinds of people, wherever they are in the world. We’v been involved in education for over 150 years, and by working across 70 countries, in 100 languages, we have bui an international reputation for our commitment to high standards and raising achievement through innovation i education. Find out more about how we can help you and your students at: Summer 2025 Question Paper Log Number P78000A Publications Code 8ET0_02_2506_MS All the material in this publication is copyright © Pearson Education Ltd 2025 General Marking Guidance • All candidates must receive the same treatment. Examiners must mark the first candidate in exactly the same way as they mark the last. • Mark schemes should be applied positively. Candidates must be rewarded for what they have shown they can do rather than penalised for omissions. • Examiners should mark according to the mark scheme not according to their perception of where the grade boundaries may lie. • There is no ceiling on achievement. All marks on the mark scheme should be used appropriately. • All the marks on the mark scheme are designed to be awarded. Examiners should always award full marks if deserved, i.e. if the answer matches the mark scheme. Examiners should also be prepared to award zero marks if the candidate’s response is not worthy of credit according to the mark scheme. • Where some judgement is required, mark schemes will provide the principles by which marks will be awarded and exemplification may be limited. • When examiners are in doubt regarding the application of the mark scheme to a candidate’s response, the team leader must be consulted. • Crossed out work should be marked UNLESS the candidate has replaced it with an alternative response. Marking Guidance – Specific The marking grids have been designed to assess student work holistically. The grids identify which Assessment Objective is being targeted by each bullet point within the level descriptors. One bullet point is linked to one Assessment Objective; however, please note that the number of bullet points in the level descriptor does not directly correlate to the number of marks in the level descriptor. When deciding how to reward an answer, examiners should consult both the indicative content and the associated marking grid(s). When using a levels-based mark scheme, the ‘best fit’ approach should be used: • examiners should first decide which descriptor most closely matches the answer and place it in that level • the mark awarded within the level will be decided based on the quality of the answer and will be modified according to how securely all bullet points are displayed at that level • in cases of uneven performance, the points above will still apply. Candidates will be placed in the level that best describes their answer according to each of the Assessment Objectives described in the level. Marks will be awarded towards the top or bottom of that level depending on how they have evidenced each of the descriptor bullet points • examiners of Advanced GCE English should remember that all Assessment Objectives within a level are equally weighted. They must consider this when making their judgements • the mark grid identifies which Assessment Objective is being targeted by each bullet point within the level descriptors • indicative content is exactly that – they are factual points that candidates are likely to use to construct their answer. It is possible for an answer to be constructed without mentioning some or all of these points, as long as they provide alternative responses to the indicative content that fulfils the requirements of the question. It is the examiner’s responsibility to apply their professional judgement to the candidate’s response in determining if the answer fulfils the requirements of the question. Paper 2 Mark scheme Question number Indicative content 1 Childhood Candidates may refer to the following in their answers: • comparison of the ways in which characters in all the novels experience homes that are somehow broken, e.g. the lack of love in the Gradgrind home in Hard Times; the social stigma of failed marriages in late Victorian society in What Maisie Knew and interwar England in Atonement; abuse in The Color Purple • use of language to describe homes, e.g. the Gradgrind home is appropriately named Stone Lodge; the lack of ‘homely’ language to reflect Maisie’s movement from one ‘home’ to another in James’ novel; the Tallis home is described as ‘baronial Gothic’ suggesting its forbidding nature • use of narrative voice to provide differing perspectives on home, e.g. Maisie’s naive yet very knowing perception that she does not belong; McEwan’s use of Briony’s shifting postmodernist narrative role to shape readers’ views of the Tallis home; Walker’s use of epistolary form to provide a fragmented view of Celie’s troubled home in The Color Purple; Dickens’ use of third-person omniscient narrator to provide an external overview of Stone Lodge, the lodgings at the bank and Stephen Blackpool’s rooms • the use of alternative ‘homes’ to provide security in the novels, e.g. Maisie’s sense of belonging with Mrs Wix in What Maisie Knew; Celie’s relationship with Shug Avery in The Color Purple; Sleary’s circus as an alternative to traditional Victorian versions of ‘home’ and family in Hard Times • comparison of factors affecting how characters experience home in the novels, e.g. a place of physical and sexual abuse for Celie in The Color Purple; a place of rejection and abandonment for Maisie in What Maisie Knew and for Sissy Jupe in Hard Times; a place of creative licence for Briony in Atonement • comparison of contextual factors affecting views of home in the novels, e.g. social advantage in Atonement; the social divisions and distinctions of Victorian England in Dickens and James, and in the segregationist USA of The Color Purple. These are suggestions only. Please accept any valid alternative response.