Mark Scheme

Both questions are marked out of 30 using the bands below. Reward close, personal engagement and precise analysis of the writer's methods, anchored in evidence. Any valid interpretation supported from the text is credited.

Band 5 (25–30): Perceptive, sophisticated analysis; a convincing, exploratory personal response; sensitive analysis of language, structure and form with precise, well-integrated references. Band 4 (19–24): Thoughtful, developed response; sound analysis of methods and their effects with apt references. Band 3 (13–18): Clear understanding; a coherent response with relevant references; clear comment on methods. Band 2 (7–12): Some understanding; a general response with some reference; awareness of but little comment on methods. Band 1 (1–6): Simple, limited comments; few references; little awareness of methods.

Indicative content — Question 1 ("Low Tide")

Candidates might explore:

• The borrowed, temporary world: the low tide reveals "ground no one owns for more than half a day"; the bay is "open like a hand" — an image of giving that is also a reminder it can close.
• Time and impermanence: the parent knows "nothing stays surrendered", that the sea is "already turning, far out, coming back / for the bay, the wreck, the hour it had lent us" — the tide as a metaphor for time reclaiming what it lends.
• The parent's choice to protect innocence: rather than explain loss, the parent lets "the water keep its own arithmetic" and says "Look how much the sea has given" — choosing wonder over warning; love as withholding a hard truth.
• The child's innocence: "she was seven, and the sand was hers" — living wholly in the present, unaware time will take it back.
• Language/symbols: "a coin worn smooth of every king it used to know" (time erasing identity); pools that "held the sky in pieces."
• Form: the calm tercets and the turn at "but" (the parent's suppressed truth) enacting restraint.

Indicative content — Question 2 ("The Understudy")

Candidates might explore:

• Character and situation: Nadia's long, unrewarded patience — "eleven years", knowing the part "better than the woman who played it"; her hope and its slow death.
• The central simile of distance: she knows the part "the way a person knows a house they have only ever seen from the street"; the applause "fell like rain on a roof she was not under" — always outside the life she wants.
• The turning point: the comforts she "had told herself" going "quietly out, like a lamp in a distant window" — the loss of hope conveyed through a fading-light image.
• The devastating final scene: performing "flawlessly, to no one at all"; "the silence did not applaud"; the aphoristic realisation that "readiness is not the same as a life, and that some curtains never rise."
• Theatre as metaphor: performance, waiting in the wings and the unraised curtain symbolise a life lived in preparation for something that never comes.
• Credit personal response to ambition, disappointment and wasted potential.

Sample Answers with Examiner Commentary

Question 1 — Sample Answers

Grade A response (extract). "The poet presents a tender parent-child relationship set against the larger, impersonal movement of time, symbolised by the tide. The opening image of the bay 'open like a hand' is beautifully ambiguous: a hand can offer a gift, but it can also close, and this hints from the start that what the low tide reveals is only lent. The idea of borrowed time is made explicit later, when the parent reflects that the sea is 'already turning, far out, coming back / for the bay, the wreck, the hour it had lent us' — the enjambment carrying the list forward mirrors the inevitability of the returning water, and 'lent' turns the whole scene into something that must be given back.

What makes the poem moving is the parent's choice. Knowing 'nothing stays surrendered', the parent chooses not to burden the seven-year-old with this truth: 'I let the water keep its own arithmetic, / and said instead, Look how much the sea has given.' The metaphor of the sea's 'arithmetic' suggests a cold, exact accounting of what is taken and returned, which the parent quietly shields the child from. The detail that 'she was seven, and the sand was hers' captures a child's total absorption in the present, and the poet implies that part of loving a child is letting them keep that innocence a little longer. The calm three-line stanzas and the pivotal 'but' — where the parent's darker knowledge is introduced and then suppressed — enact this restraint, so that form and feeling work together."

Mark: 28/30 (Band 5). Examiner commentary: A perceptive, exploratory response that reads the tide as a metaphor for time and traces the poem's emotional core — the parent's decision to protect the child's innocence rather than explain loss. The candidate analyses specific methods and their effects with real sensitivity (the ambiguous 'open like a hand', the enjambment enacting the returning tide, the 'arithmetic' metaphor) and links form to meaning through the pivotal 'but' and the calm tercets. Integrated quotation and a genuine personal response secure a mark near the top of the band.

Grade C response (extract). "The poem is about a parent and their young daughter walking on the beach at low tide. The daughter collects things like 'a green bottle' and 'a crab's discarded shell'. The parent knows the tide will come back and take everything but decides not to tell the daughter and says 'Look how much the sea has given' instead. This shows the parent loves the daughter and wants her to be happy. The poet uses a simile 'open like a hand' to describe the bay."

Mark: 15/30 (Band 3). Examiner commentary: The candidate clearly understands the situation and the parent's kind decision not to spoil the child's happiness, and selects relevant quotations. However, the references are explained rather than analysed: 'open like a hand' is labelled a simile but its suggestion of something offered yet able to close is not explored, and the central idea of the tide as time reclaiming what it lends is understood but not analysed. To reach Bands 4–5, each quotation needs developed analysis of the effect of the method, plus comment on structure or form.

Question 2 — Sample Answers

Grade A response (extract). "The writer presents Nadia as a woman whose long patience has curdled into quiet despair. Her situation is established with painful economy: 'For eleven years Nadia had been the understudy, and for eleven years the leading lady had not once been ill.' The repetition of 'eleven years' stresses how much of her life has been spent waiting, and the writer's central simile captures her exclusion perfectly — she knows the part 'the way a person knows a house they have only ever seen from the street', so that even her mastery keeps her outside the life she wants. This sense of being always outside recurs in the image of applause that 'fell like rain on a roof she was not under', which movingly conveys that the reward is always for someone else.

The turning point is the death of her hope. The comforting stories she 'had told herself' — that her turn would come, that there was nobility in readiness — go 'quietly out, like a lamp in a distant window', a fading-light image that makes despair feel gentle and final rather than dramatic. The final scene is devastating: she performs the speech 'flawlessly, to no one at all', and 'the silence did not applaud'. Here the writer uses the theatre itself as a metaphor — the empty dressing room, the unraised curtain — to show a life lived entirely in preparation. The closing aphorism, that 'readiness is not the same as a life, and that some curtains never rise', crystallises the tragedy of wasted potential and gives the extract its quiet, aching force."

Mark: 27/30 (Band 5). Examiner commentary: A sophisticated response that tracks Nadia's emotional arc from patient hope to final despair, using the theatre as a sustained metaphor for a life spent waiting. The candidate analyses method and effect with precision — the repetition of 'eleven years', the 'house seen from the street' simile, the applause 'like rain on a roof she was not under', and the fading 'lamp in a distant window' — and reads the closing aphorism perceptively. The consistent focus on how the writer's choices create meaning, plus a strong personal response, place it firmly in the top band.