New HSC English Extension 1 syllabus from 2027: what's changed

HSC English Extension 1 has a new syllabus, the English Extension 11-12 Syllabus (2024). The 2027 HSC is the first exam on it, and the 2026 HSC is the last exam on the 2017 syllabus. If you start Year 12 in Term 4 2026, this page is about your course. Everything here is based on NESA's published pages and notices (prescriptions and HSC examinations page last checked 7 October 2026), summarised in our own words.

Timeline

What changed compared with the 2017 course

The structure is familiar. Year 11 is Texts, culture and value, which includes a related research project. In Year 12, English Extension 1 is built around Literary worlds plus one elective. You study one elective, not all five.

All five electives are new. This is the biggest content change.

New electives (2024 syllabus): Confessional worlds, Historical worlds, Hybrid worlds, Natural worlds and Shakespearean worlds.

Old electives (2017 syllabus): Literary homelands, Worlds of upheaval, Reimagined worlds, Literary mindscapes and Intersecting worlds.

The new electives are not renamed versions of the old ones, so notes written for Literary homelands, Worlds of upheaval, Reimagined worlds, Literary mindscapes or Intersecting worlds are useful for skills only.

The 2027 to 2030 prescribed texts

NESA prescribes six texts for each elective (30 in all: 26 extended print texts and 4 film texts). In your elective you study three of the prescribed texts, including at least two extended print texts, plus one related text of your own choosing. Where a text is a collection, NESA also fixes the poems, stories or essays that count as the prescribed text. Each elective's study page lists the set selections: Confessional worlds, Historical worlds, Hybrid worlds, Natural worlds and Shakespearean worlds.

What each elective is about, in NESA's own framing (paraphrased):

• Confessional worlds looks at performance, intimacy and artifice, and at how a confessing voice can be unreliable, subjective and biased while still telling us about identity, memory and self-representation.
• Historical worlds looks at the interplay between truth and reality in representations of the past, including questions of bias, authority and legitimacy, and at how texts use the past to make sense of the present.
• Hybrid worlds looks at literature that experiments with form, structure, time and genre, and at texts that draw attention to their own textuality and to the reader's part in making meaning.
• Natural worlds looks at the relationship between literature and the natural environment, including the pastoral, self-renewal, beauty and fragility, and the part nature plays in shaping culture, identity and purpose.
• Shakespearean worlds looks at how Shakespeare's worlds are referenced, reconstructed, extended or subverted in other texts, and why his work endures across cultures and contexts.

You study one elective, so only the row for your elective matters. NESA's lists also give editions and the set poems and essays, which are on the NSW Curriculum Year 12 page linked under sources.

The exam and assessment

HSC exam

From 2027 English Extension 1 is an online (computer-based) exam. It is worth 50 marks and runs for 2 hours plus 10 minutes reading time. Question 1 (Literary worlds) is worth 25 marks and uses stimulus and/or unseen material; it may have two parts or be one sustained response, and it may ask for critical writing, creative writing or both. Question 2 (your elective) is worth 25 marks and is one sustained critical response on your prescribed texts and related text. The 2017 exam was also 50 marks (25 plus 25) in 2 hours plus 10 minutes reading time, so the marks and length are unchanged; the change is that the paper is now taken on a computer. Practise typing sustained, planned responses under timed conditions. The sample exam materials are on NSW Curriculum: we link them rather than copy them.

School-based assessment

NESA's new rules weight the two course components equally: knowledge and understanding of complex texts and how and why they are valued (50%) and skills in complex analysis, sustained composition and independent investigation (50%). NESA's guidance is that individual tasks carry between 10% and 40%.

Take-home limit

From Term 4 2026 each HSC course may have at most one take-home task, worth at most 15% of the school-based mark. English Extension 2 is on NESA's exempt list; English Extension 1 is not. Marks must also reflect your own work and not generative AI use.

What to do now

If you sit the 2026 HSC (2017 syllabus). Nothing changes for you. Keep using the old elective pages and your 2017 texts. Do not switch to new-syllabus notes.

If you sit the 2027 HSC (2024 syllabus).

1. Find out which new elective your school offers and which three of its six prescribed texts you will study, then check them against our elective page and the NSW Curriculum prescriptions. Start thinking early about your own related text.
2. Treat 2019 to 2026 Extension 1 notes as practice in skills (reading across a worlds idea, building an argument, writing under time), not as content.
3. Practise 25-mark responses done on a keyboard, planned in a few minutes, and for both Literary worlds and your elective.
4. Expect more of your school assessment under supervised conditions because of the take-home limit.

If you are studying other English courses, see English Advanced: what's changed and English Extension 2: what's changed.

Official sources

Use the NSW Curriculum overview, school-based assessment and HSC examinations pages listed under sources, plus NESA notice 31/24 on the new English syllabuses. Dates are NESA's, and NESA says some are indicative and subject to change, so recheck them before you rely on them.