Malala graduates from High School with Straight A's, Taliban apoplectic

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. These are GCSEs, exams normally taken around age 16 in several subjects

After that, if you stay in education you do a few subjects for A level, normally for 2 years. A place at university normally depends on you getting a certain set of grades at A level (your GCSE results will be taken into account for whether it's worth making the offer). In recent years, rather than just cutting straight down to, typically, 3 subjects for A level, pupils study 4 subjects for 1 year and sit AS exams for them, then drop one and sit 3 A2 exams the next year, and this all combines to be 'their A levels'.

These 'A's and 'A*'s are the grades she's achieved in the GCSEs.

Malala is a little older than most GSCE students, but she had to take medical time off, changed national systems, and I think Urdu is her first language, and English second, so that's not surprising.

While some schools do stop after GCSE, and students move to others if taking A levels, Edgbaston High School, like most, continues on to A levels too (it actually starts pre-school, so a girl could spend her entire school career at just that one school). She might be switching schools, but I doubt it, so she hasn't 'graduated' in any sense.