A SCHOOL has paid tribute to Vandana Singh, who died in a crash last week in Oxford.
Russel Ellicott, headmaster at Pate's Grammar School, remembered the 21-year-old, who grew up in Cheltenham and had gone to the Hester's Way school.
He said: "Vandana was one of those wonderful girls by whom a year group will be remembered.
"Lessons only began when she arrived, as though somehow she was blessing them, smiling them into action."
Vandana went on to Exeter College at the University of Oxford, to study law.
Mr Ellicott added: "She was academically one of the best – places to read Law at Oxford are not won by chance – and the world was evidently at her feet.
Perceptive
"She was sharp, questioning, perceptive, sensitive and incredibly hard-working, growing into insight and understanding in a most wonderful way because she never lost her enthusiasm: achievement was never mundane and her place at Oxford was, for her, a genuine surprise.
"However we knew it was inevitable once she set her mind to it."
He also paid tribute to her personality, her charm and her beautiful smile.
"She was also an athlete, a county squash player – quite simply one of those who was always going to excel in whichever world she chose to grace," he said.
Mr Ellicott said Vandana was charming and challenging, diligent and intuitive, hard working and yet apparently effortless, a perfectionist.
Vandana was walking along the A40 in Headington, Oxford, just after 10.30pm on Monday last week when she was hit by a Ford Ka. She was pronounced dead at the scene.