{"id":942379,"date":"2026-05-06T21:30:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/942379\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T21:30:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:30:25","slug":"james-gillespies-treated-to-surprise-visit-from-nobel-laureate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/942379\/","title":{"rendered":"James Gillespie’s treated to surprise visit from Nobel Laureate"},"content":{"rendered":"

JAMES Gillespie\u2019s High School in Edinburgh welcomed an unexpected visitor last week,\u00a0Nobel Peace Prize\u00a0<\/a>laureate\u00a0and women\u2019s rights campaigner\u00a0Malala Yousafzai<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yousafzai\u00a0visited the\u00a0James Gillespie\u2019s High School<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0short notice during a trip to Edinburgh on Wednesday, leaving\u00a0and teachers\u00a0and the city council scrambling to\u00a0make preparations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She made her way to the school to discuss her work with the school\u2019s \u201cincredible\u201d students and visit\u00a0the Malala Building, which was opened in 2015, for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After receiving the\u00a0Nobel Peace Prize<\/a>\u00a0in 2014, Malala was given the slightly less auspicious\u00a0honour\u00a0of having the building, which houses the main teaching area and features 57 classroom spaces, at James Gillespie\u2019s, named after her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After more than a decade, the building has finally been\u00a0christened\u00a0by an official visit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Malala was joined at\u00a0James Gillespie\u2019s by a group of Afghan medical students\u00a0who fled from the Taliban\u2019s oppression after\u00a0the\u00a0Islamist fundamentalist\u00a0regime prevented them from finishing their studies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They were given\u00a0asylum\u00a0in Scotland by the Linda Norgrove Foundation, and the Scottish Government changed their rules to\u00a0allow them to stay and complete their\u00a0training.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Afghan women studying medicine in Scotland met with Kirsty McNeill, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland at Queen Elizabeth House in August 2025<\/p>\n

During the same trip last week, Malala met with First Minister John Swinney to discuss the Taliban\u2019s systematic exclusion of women and\u00a0girls and\u00a0joined calls for\u00a0gender apartheid to be\u00a0recognised\u00a0as a crime under international law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Malala thanked\u00a0Edinburgh for a \u201cwonderful day\u201d,\u00a0and her team described the visit as a \u201cpowerful reminder of everything at stake\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Malala, however, appears to have taken staff at James Gillespie\u2019s off-guard, with the visit being confirmed at the\u00a0eleventh\u00a0hour.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In\u00a0an email sent to parents, headteacher\u00a0Neil McCallum\u00a0said: \u201cWe had an unexpected visit from Malala Yousafzai this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a surprise visit,\u00a0organised\u00a0very late\u00a0in the day. It was lovely for her to have the opportunity to\u00a0meet with\u00a012 of our amazing young people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe then had a brief tour around the Malala Yousafzai building, before heading to her next appointment. We were grateful to have had the opportunity to welcome her to the school.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Education, Children and Families Convenor, James Dalgleish made his way to the school to welcome the visiting laureate.<\/p>\n

Speaking after the visit, he said: \u201cIt was fantastic to welcome Malala to James Gillespies High School last week and to show her the school building named after her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no doubt that Malala and the Afgan medical students will have inspired our young people during what was a really special and memorable visit.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Malala confirmed the\u00a0visit\u00a0on\u00a0social media\u00a0and shared\u00a0a handful of pictures with beaming pupils\u00a0and\u00a0sun-soaked city landmarks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the caption, she added: \u201cBack in beautiful Edinburgh! Last week I visited James Gillespie\u2019s High School and talked with their incredible students.\u00a0
\u00a0
\u201cI also met Afghan medical students who were studying to become doctors when the Taliban closed their classrooms. They are here now, finishing their education, because Scotland welcomed them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you Edinburgh for a wonderful day!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Malala, now 28, was shot in the head by the Taliban on a school bus in Pakistan\u2019s Swat Valley in October 2012, aged 15, after years of activism for girls\u2019 right to education. She survived and was flown to the UK for treatment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2014, she became the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history, receiving the Peace Prize at age 17.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

She has since spoken out for the millions of Afghan girls banned by the Taliban from going to secondary school, sharing their\u00a0stories\u00a0and calling for an\u00a0end\u00a0to\u00a0gender apartheid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a statement, the Malala Fund, her official charity,\u00a0said: \u201cThis week in Scotland, Malala paid a surprise visit to James Gillespie\u2019s High School, where she saw the building named after her, met with students and the school\u2019s leadership team.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was joined by Afghan medical students who are now in Scotland to finish their degrees; they were just months from becoming doctors when the Taliban banned them from their classrooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn one room: girls learning freely, and women who had that right taken from them. It was a powerful reminder of everything at stake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen girls are locked out of education, they lose the chance to shape their own futures; their communities lose the doctors, leaders and changemakers they would have become.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

They\u00a0added: \u201cThe Linda Norgrove Foundation brought these Afghan students to Scotland, and the Scottish Government changed its regulations to give them free tuition and home student status.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEstablished in memory of Linda Norgrove, who was devoted to Afghanistan\u2019s future, the Foundation supports education, health and opportunity for women and children in Afghanistan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what solidarity looks like when it becomes action.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like this:<\/p>\n

Like Loading…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JAMES Gillespie\u2019s High School in Edinburgh welcomed an unexpected visitor last week,\u00a0Nobel Peace Prize\u00a0laureate\u00a0and women\u2019s rights campaigner\u00a0Malala Yousafzai.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,213665,1102,2266,4884,263229,263230,50504,712,16,15],"class_list":["post-942379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edinburgh","tag-britain","tag-bruntsfield","tag-edinburgh","tag-education","tag-great-britain","tag-james-gillespies","tag-malala","tag-nobel-prize","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116529766475839463","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}