When Iqra Ahmed’s brother was killed in a car crash, she had just begun Year 11 and was months away from taking her GCSE exams.
But she turned her grief into determination and, a week after the tragedy, she returned to lessons at St Peter’s CE Academy in Fenton .
“I wanted to do this for him. I wanted to make Wajid proud,” she said.
Now Iqra, from Shelton , has achieved nine GCSEs and is hoping for a career in medicine. She has also played an instrumental role in helping her family cope this past year.
Her 18-year-old brother Wajid had been due to start at Staffordshire University just a day after the accident claimed his life last September .
He had been a passenger in a car - driven by his best friend Abdullah Waseem – that crashed as the pair made their way back to Stoke-on-Trent after working a shift at a Macclesfield takeaway.
Iqra said: “At the time, I felt there wasn’t really a purpose to my exams. I felt I couldn’t go back into school. But my family, the teachers and other students were there for me every day.
“It was really hard. It was a struggle. But I found doing my GCSEs also kept my head away from thinking about it all the time.
“I had taken English literature a year early and I remember how Wajid had been proud of me when I got my result. That’s what pushed me and motivated me.”
Iqra’s teachers have also praised her incredible strength of character and say she always ‘puts the needs and feelings of others before her own’.
Now she is planning to do A-levels in maths, biology and chemistry at college.
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