For many teenagers, winning a Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 16 might offer some license to coast through the rest of school—but most teenagers are not the young Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai. For her, being the youngest person ever to win the world’s most prestigious award didn’t overshadow the importance of studying for her school-leaving exams.
In recent months, Malala, now 18, has put aside some of her busy agenda of appearances and international talks, and focused exclusively on her studies at Edgbaston High School, the private girls’ school in Birmingham she has been attending since she relocated from Pakistan in 2013. She came to the UK for treatment after surviving being shot in the head at the age of 15 on her way home from school in Pakistan by a Taliban gunman, who targeted her because of her advocacy for girls’ education.
Today her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, proudly announced her academic success on Twitter. She received her General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) with straight As—including six scored at the top of the scale as A*.
Malala has received many congratulations from Pakistan, a country that—even from afar—she “continues to make proud,” in the words of the national newspaper The Express Tribune. The congratulating voices included Aseefa Zardari, the daughter of the country’s assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who referred to Malala as a “sister” on Twitter:
The Guardian reports that Malala is thinking of attending Oxford next: “I want to get my education—a good university education. A lot of the politicians have studied in Oxford, like Benazir [Bhutto]. My dream is to empower myself with education, and then it is a weapon,” she told the newspaper.
Correction: In a previous version of this story, we quoted the Pakistani Taliban as featured in the Khabaristan Times—which is, in fact, a satirical publication.