Fifteen year old Manbir Kaur, a student of Shri Guru Nanak Devji High School at Nankana Sahib, scored 1035 marks out of 1100 to emerge get second position in the matriculation exams. The student who got first position got 1,080 marks. The Nankana Sahib district is part of the Lahore Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education.
Manbir’s father Giyani Prem Singh said that for him his daughter was more precious than his son because she had brought the whole family “pride and honour”.
Manbir wants to become a doctor but her father cannot afford to send her to Lahore for higher studies so she is studying at a private college in Nankana Sahib. That may change, however, with her academic achievement and the massive publicity it has received in the media.
The father said that Manbir studied on her own and never took tuitions, which is all the more remarkable given the whole culture of having to take tuitions in secondary school classes. Manbir studied at the Guru Nanak Gee Public Model High School in Nankana Sahib, which is operated by the town’s local Sikh community school. After that she sat for her matric exam from Hira Public Model High School, also in Nankana Sahib.
One of Manbir’s uncle’s, Harcharan Singh, is the Pakistan Army’s first Sikh commissioner officer and is currently a major. He passed out from the Pakistan Military Academy in 2007. A cousin of hers, Gulab Singh, is the first traffic warden.
