Understanding students' perspectives on the foreign language (FL) curriculum could be considered as a vital step in curriculum design and lesson planning. This study drew on data provided by a single open question survey to investigate the perspective of Dutch secondary school students (N = 635) from 15 different schools with regard to the benefits of literature education in English as a foreign language (EFL). This study also sought to find out whether there are any differences in these perspectives between the different schools. The Comprehensive Approach to Foreign Language Literature Learning was used to analyse the students' answers. Results show that the majority of the students consider literature in a FL primarily as language education. Furthermore, a comparison between the 15 schools indicated that there were differences in the way students from different schools perceive the benefits of the EFL literature curriculum. The article concludes with a discussion of pedagogical issues and suggestions for ways in which the student perspective can be studied on a small scale.