Nobel prize winning campaigner Malala Yousafzai has received a conditional offer from a top UK university.
The 19-year-old, who is studying for A-levels, told a conference her focus was on achieving its requirements.
“I have received a conditional offer which is three As,” said Malala, who was shot by the Taliban in 2012 for her campaign on girls’ rights to education.
Her speech drew a standing ovation from the Association of School and College Leaders conference in Birmingham.
Malala, who narrowly escaped death after being attacked on her way home from school in Pakistan, did not confirm which university had made the offer.
But earlier this year she told Newsweek magazine that she had recently had an interview for a degree place at an Oxford college.
Lady Margaret Hall was the first Oxford college to educate women and former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto also studied there.
“I’m studying right now,” Ms Yousafzai told the conference.
“I’m in Year 13, I have my A-level exams coming and I have received a conditional offer which is three As. That’s what my focus is right now and I hope to continue my work and also continue my studies.”
She confirmed that alongside her degree, she would continue to work for the Malala Fund, which campaigns for girls across the globe to get a minimum of 12 years quality education.
“My goal is to make sure every child, a girl and a boy, they get the opportunity to go to school.
“It is their basic human right, so I will be working on that and I will never stop until I see the last child going to school.
“And I’m really thankful to you all for you support for encouraging me for my mission.
“That’s what makes me and keeps me so strong so thank you so much for that and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.”
The teenager also provoked laughter from the audience when she revealed she thought she was in trouble when she was called out of a chemistry lesson to be told she was the next Nobel Prize recipient.
She told delegates: “Suddenly, our deputy head teacher appears in the classroom and I’m just quite shocked, because why would she call me? I thought I was in trouble or something.
“She called me outside and I went and she said ‘you have won the Nobel Peace Prize’, so it was a big surprise, and I said ‘thank you’.”
