Walsall teenager gets equivalent of incredible 14 A*s for his GCSEs
He would have been happy with straight As – but even 16-year-old Hassan Akram couldn’t have dreamt up a sweep of A*s.
The Walsall pupil has scooped some of the top GCSE marks in the country, boasting the equivalent of an incredible 14 A*s.
Hassan, who studies at Queen Mary’s Grammar School in Walsall, achieved the highest possible grades in ICT, old maths, new maths, further maths, English literature, English language, business and economics, Mandarin, design and technology, geography, religious studies, biology, chemistry and physics.
His official results were 10 A*s, an A with distinction in further maths, a nine - on the new one to nine scale - in maths and English literature and an eight in English language
The teenage genius, who has been achieving straight A*s since year seven, will now stay on at the Sutton Road grammar school to study biology, chemistry and maths at A-Level. After that he hopes to study medicine at university, potentially specialising in neurology as he progresses.
He told the Express & Star: “It has been so hard but I am just over the moon really. Usually I am a top achiever and from year seven I did get straight A*s but year 11 was really tough for me. I had a dip at the start and my mock results were not what I was expecting. I would have been perfectly happy with straight As in my GCSEs but to open the envelope and see the results was unbelievable, I was so happy.
“The school are really supportive. It is a grammar school so the academic side is there but its not all about that, we get a huge range of grades. They do so much outside of lessons for the students, I have been to places like China and Borneo thanks to the school. The extra curricular activities organised have been really beneficial to me as a person, maybe even more so than the grades.”
Asked about how he revised to achieve such astonishingly good grades, Hassan added: “Me and my friends did a lot of group work, spending a lot of time at Birmingham library and chatting over video calls. There was six/seven of us who would help each other out but we did not stop ourselves having fun or relaxing as that is really important.”
Hassan’s mother Sophia joined him at the school yesterday morning to see him get his results, despite being under specific instructions to stay well away.
She added: "I did expect him to get good marks across the board as he is a high performer, but I was certainly not expecting that. Me and his father are very proud of him and all his hard work."
Queen Mary’s Grammar head of school, Richard Langton, said: “I think Hassan has done supremely well. He has worked incredibly hard and embodies what we stand for as a school in high academic achievement but also taking part in extra curricular activities.”
