Monday 9th March
Routh Address
A frightening voice on the radio, spreading across the valley. “From January 15, girls will not be allowed to attend schools,”
Peace had left us long ago. We were living in terrorism and violence. Firing and bombing became our daily wake-up calls.
And now no girl could go to school.
As an 11 year old, I worried about my future and my freedom. All I wanted was to put on my ink-stained scarf, walk through the streets, sit on our old wooden chairs inside those cracked walls, pick my pen, open my book.
I wanted to read and write and question and learn.
14th January 2009 was my last day of school in Swat Valley. And 14th January 2019 was first day back to lectures for my second term at Oxford University.
I know how far I have come and I appreciate that I can tell a story of triumph but millions of girls are sitting in their homes worried about their future and their freedom. Why are so many girls — any girl — still out of school?
I am working every day to help my sisters go to school. I want every girl to get at least 12 years of safe, free, quality education. I want them to pursue their dreams and contribute to a better world for all of us.
Maria read a passage from I am Malala, written by Malala Yousafzai
Some of you may have spent time researching your family tree. If you’ve managed to trace your family back through old records, you might have discovered names, dates of birth, dates of death, and perhaps the occupations of your grandparents, great‑grandparents, and great‑great‑grandparents, along with all the associated aunts and uncles across the branches of the family which ultimately lead to you at the base of the tree.
I know a little about our family history. A couple of generations ago, they lived in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with each generation settling close to the previous one. Many worked as fishermen near the port of Lowestoft, or as blacksmiths or butchers. It was only in my grandparents’ generation that anyone ventured further afield in search of work. My grandfather met my grandmother when they were both employed at Sainsbury’s in Cambridge (following family tradition, he worked on the meat counter.) When they became engaged, some 90 years ago, she had to leave her job immediately because it was considered improper for an engaged couple to work together. He carried on, but as a woman, she wasn’t allowed to do so.
On Friday, there was an excellent evening of drama performances. I enjoyed all of them, and they really made me think. Zero, written and performed by Ruby Foster and Shusank Nembang, told the story of a mother and her young son living in a little flat, struggling to pay rent, buy food, and cover their bills. The mother could not find work that also allowed her to care for her little boy, and he pretended to like the below‑par present he received at Christmas so he wouldn’t upset her.
When I spoke about my great‑grandparents, I didn’t go into much detail about the women in the family. My great grandmother worked as a servant until she married and I think another may have helped in a village school after her husband died. But the truth is that most of them spent the majority of their lives looking after their families, highly worthwhile but I wonder if they had much choice.
Yesterday was International Women’s Day, and as I learned, while watching volleyball at the weekend, in some countries women and girls are given flowers such as tulips and roses to honour them and to say thank you for all that they do. Meanwhile, the reading that Maria shared earlier came from Malala Yousafzai. Malala is originally from Pakistan and she was shot by the Taliban at just 15 for speaking out about the right of girls to go to school. She survived her injuries, was treated at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, later attended school not far from here, went on to Oxford University, and became the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
If you haven’t already, do read her book I Am Malala, which tells her incredible story. She continues her work through the Malala Fund, an organisation that invests in education programmes for girls facing the greatest barriers. Malala believes that all children—girls and boys—should have equal access to education because it gives them freedom, power, and choices.
Everyone sitting here today is receiving a good education and has others around them who believe in the vital importance of schooling. If we embrace the opportunities education offers, some of us may choose to follow our parents’ career paths—perhaps there’s even a future blacksmith or butcher among you - but in a rapidly changing world, some of the jobs you may have one day don’t yet exist. We may in the future, choose to have career breaks to care for our family but the important thing is this: those who have the advantage of education—men and women—are far more likely to have the advantage of choice.
When people cannot access education, they are far less likely to find stable, well‑paid employment. This creates a cycle of poverty, where families remain reliant on low‑income work and struggle to improve their standard of living. Children raised in those circumstances are then less likely to access a good education themselves—just like the characters Ruby and Shusank portrayed. UNESCO suggests that if every adult worldwide completed just two more years of schooling, 60 million people could be lifted out of poverty.
So, we really are very fortunate to have the opportunity not only to receive an education, but to choose to take advantage of the many opportunities it offers. A successful education opens doors, widens horizons, makes us desirable to employers across the world, and gives us choices in our future lives—choices that many others, both men and women, never get. And education may well place us in a position to make things better for others. Indeed, as Malala famously said: “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”