Majd Kweder was just 15 when he and his family moved to Bootle. He knew little to no English and had hardly any education before starting school.
Majd fled Syria with his family when he was just 10-years-old, travelling to Egypt. Here he began working in a local bakery the age of just 14, before moving to Bootle where his family are now.
The teenager enrolled at King's Leadership Academy Hawthornes where after just one month he was told he must sit his mock exams. In a single month he went from hardly knowing English to passing the subject in his mock exams.
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Now 18, he has gone from strength to strength and has now managed to take home A*s in Biology, Chemistry, Maths and Further Maths after two years at St. Mary's college in Crosby.
He told the ECHO : "I was born in Syria but left at the age of 10. I've had almost no education as I've had to help my parents financially and then we came here when I was 15 in 2018.
"We got here at the end year 10 and I had the choice to leave because I was going to be 16 or stay. I chose to do my GCSEs in a year. The stress started building up towards November, around about six months before exams. It was really hard, I had to push myself to get the grades I need to apply for my scholarship."
Thanks to hard work and good grades, Majd managed to join St. Mary's on an Edmund Rice Scholarship. He is now taking a gap year before hopefully moving to London to complete a degree in either medicine or economics.
He said: "I'm so happy. I am proud of myself. I don't want to be big headed but I'm so happy. I'm taking a gap year now to just relax because it has been a lot of hard work to get here. It was all worth it."
Majd currently lives with his parents, Osama, 47, and Rasha, 40, as well as his younger brothers Mohammed, 16, and Yousef, eight. His mum and dad are both currently studying themselves, with Osama studying mechanics and Rasha studying hairdressing.
The former St. Mary's student also struggled leaving Syria when he was younger, noting that there was nothing he could do as his family fled the country.
He added: "At the beginning it was sad, it was pretty horrible, but you have to live with it. I just had to accept it. I was just a child, I couldn't change anything. I don't like talking about it, too much pain."
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