Malala Yousafzai, the teenage education rights campaigner who came to Britain after the Pakistani Taliban tried to kill her, has scored high marks in national school exams, her father said.
Malala, shot in the head three years ago for championing girls’ rights to education, gained six A* grades, the highest possible, and four As, the second highest, in her GCSEs.
“My wife Toor Pekai and I are proud of Malala,” her father Ziauddin wrote on Twitter. “Education for every child.”
Her top grades were in biology, chemistry, physics, religious studies and two maths exams.
The 18-year-old was flown to Britain in 2012 for hospital treatment after being shot on a school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.
She now lives permanently in Birmingham, central England, with her family and attends an all-girls school.
Malala, who hopes one day to be prime minister of Pakistan, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 jointly with India’s Kailash Satyarthi for promoting education rights for children.
GCSEs are exams in a wide range of subjects usually taken by all children in Britain at the end of their fifth year in high school.
GCSE grades A* to C have risen slightly this year, but top A* and A grades have edged down.
In broadly stable results, the proportion of A* to C grades rose to 69%, up from 68.8% last year, but A* grades fell by 0.1 percentage points.
Head teachers’ leader Brian Lightman has warned of “volatility” in results for some individual schools.
But Michael Turner, director general for the Joint Council for Qualifications, said: “At a national level there is very little change in this year’s results but we do see educational policies continuing to have an effect on entry patterns and results at a subject level.
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan welcomed the results in England as evidence that “a generation of young people from all backgrounds are now securing the GCSEs that help give them the widest range of options later in life – whether looking for a rewarding job or a top apprenticeship”.
