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‘Prince’ Zoni gets an Eton welcome

31/10/2006

THE British Empire was won on the playing fields of Eton is an old saying that Zulqarnain Majid can certainly agree with after experiencing three weeks at the top public school where royal brothers William and Harry were educated.

The 16-year-old Salford lad known as Zoni, who won a scholarship to Windsor public school, was surprised to find sport was treated as importantly as academic subjects.

Said the former Swinton High pupil: "Lessons finish at 1.15pm and the entire afternoon is given over to sport. Each term you have to pick one of the major sports. At the moment I'm playing right back on the football field."

Zoni says he's having an "amazing time".

"The place is so friendly and inclusive. When I first applied for the scholarship and was accepted I was told Eton is no longer like its old media image of an elite place. One-in-three of the pupils have some form of scholarship and all kinds of boys from all kinds of communities are being taught here.

"I can't say I've met sons of famous people but a boy house called Arthur Soames is the great grandson of Winston Churchill."
But how is he coping being away from home for the first time?

"I miss Swinton and my family, but I can go home pretty much every weekend and I have my own room here, so it's good.

"I e-mail my parents and text them, so I'm staying in touch all the time and telling them my news."

After an impressive GCSE performance - he got nine A*s, two As and one of the top five marks in Urdu in the UK - Zoni is taking biology, chemistry, double maths and design at A level.

He wants to follow in his father, Irfan Majid's, footsteps and become a doctor. His aim is to study medicine at Oxford or Cambridge.

It was Zoni's mum Aqila who phoned the college on the off chance her son might get a last minute scholarship - and was told the answer was "a definite yes".

Mrs Majid, 40, said: "I had heard of Eton and that it was the college where Prince Harry and Prince William went and I thought to myself why shouldn't my little prince go there too?"

Said Dad Irfan: "We are of course very proud. We have visited the school and it is a magnificent place. But the staff do all they can to get away from the elite image."