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Year 10’s Aaryan Prabhaker has won the 2026 World Math Hackathon – a global competition where contestants focus on using mathematics to solve some of the planet’s most pressing issues.

QE is announcing his success today on National Numeracy Day 2026.*

Aaryan won the gold medal and first prize, beating a young Canadian mathematician into second place, reversing the order last year, when he was runner-up to Canadian pupil Havish Bhavasar.

He secured first place with his essay on the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on poverty reduction. Pupils from Canada took both second and third places this year.

Head of Mathematics Jessica Steer said: “Our congratulations go to Aaryan, who showed perseverance, creativity, and, of course, great mathematical ability to produce an outstanding essay.”

Open to pupils aged 11-17 worldwide, the World Math Hackathon is run by Explorer Hop, a Toronto-based educational organisation that focuses on financial literacy, money management, and entrepreneurship.

The competition tackles a different SDG every year and is aligned with the United Nations Sustainability Plan.

Previous examples of the challenges set include: the problem of vaccine deliveries in underprivileged countries; creating sustainable living communities by designing a walkable city, and finding solutions for sustainability and inequality.

Aaryan rose to the challenge by producing an essay on how education and training could help reduce poverty in Ethiopia – the case study provided by the competition organisers.

He applied mathematical modelling to evaluate three spending options to provide basic education, but also suggested other, low-cost measures, including the use of social media and community story-telling sessions.

His essay concluded with these words: “A holistic and well-rounded approach can help solve the crisis that Ethiopia faces today and help provide education to millions of children. Education is like the water, sun and soil, all combined together that can help nurture and grow these children out of poverty.”

* National Numeracy Day is a UK campaign dedicated to improving everyday maths. Each May, individuals, schools and organisations across the country come together to help children and adults feel more confident with numbers at work, at home and at school. This year’s theme is Count on Your Community.

• You can read Aaryan’s essay here.

Year 13 students at QE have already received some 200 offers from universities in the top 10 of the QS world rankings – with the results of many applications still to come.

2026 is shaping up to be a vintage year for future study in the States. Danyal Talha has been offered a place at Harvard (which is in the QS world top 10). Pratham Bhavsar (pictured top left) has no fewer than four American university offers.

And Year 12’s Ameen Elamin will be following in the footsteps of many famous Fulbright scholars after winning a place on the Sutton Trust’s US programme.

Ameen is not the only such success: this year’s 44 Oxford and Cambridge offers for QE pupils include three pupils securing valuable and prestigious scholarships.

Assistant Head (Destinations and Progress) James Kane said: “We’re proud to be able to celebrate these early offers. The determination of our sixth-formers, alongside the support of our dedicated staff, has led to outstanding success in highly competitive courses and prestigious scholarships across the UK and USA.

“I offer huge congratulations to our students and their families, along with my best wishes for the rapidly approaching A-level exams.”

This year’s offers to date include:

• 62 from Imperial College London, which is second in the QS world university rankings. The offers are for courses including Medicine, Computing, Maths, Physics, and Engineering;
• 15 offers from Oxford (fourth place in QS rankings) and 29 from Cambridge (ranked sixth);
• Pratham’s four US offers – from Penn State, Rutgers, Syracuse & Fordham universities;
• An unconditional offer for Fine Art at the highly regarded Kingston University School of Art for Ryuki Watanabe (pictured top right).

The three pupils with Oxbridge offers securing scholarships include Adithya Raghuraman (pictured top centre) – selected as an Ellison Scholar. Launched only in 2023, the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) programme funds the studies of Oxford undergraduates and provides them with the opportunity to work as interns on cutting-edge EIT research and innovation projects that aim for positive global impact.

Adithya has an offer to take Oxford’s Mathematics/Mathematics and Statistics course at Christ Church. He is one of just 20 students across 14 Oxford colleges from 15 countries to receive full university funding.

The other two are choral scholarships, which go to two stars of QE’s Music department, pictured here.

One is for Leo Sellis, who has an offer to study Music at Jesus College, Cambridge; the other is for Adam Liang, whose offer is to read Economics at Gonville & Caius, also at Cambridge.

Sixth-former Hisham Khan was named in the top 25% of the 100 élite young mathematicians competing in the final round of the British Mathematical Olympiad – considered the UK’s hardest national Maths competition.

Hisham and fellow Year 13 pupil Joshua Wilkinson reached the BMO’s second round after both won bronze medals in round 1, where they were ranked among the top 100 of the 1,300 who took part.

Assistant Head of Mathematics Kirtan Shah said: “Due to the sheer volume of students who enter, it is not easy to be a top scorer in round 1 and progress to the final round. But Hisham and Joshua did even better than that, mustering clear focus, endurance and resilience in round 2.

“Overall, theirs was a fantastic performance that will serve as an inspiration to others.”

The BMO is a UK-wide competition for Year 10 to 13 run by the UK Maths Trust (UKMT). Even to enter, students have to rank in the top 1,000 of the separate UK Senior Mathematical Challenge (UKSMC), or be entered by their Maths teacher.

The first round of the BMO lasts three-and-a-half hours and has six questions.

Both Hisham and Joshua qualified for it by coming in the UKSMC top 1,000.

Like round 1, round 2 lasts three-and-a-half hours, but it has four, not six, questions.

Hisham is no stranger to success in the BMO: in the previous academic year, he secured a silver medal in round 1, while 2025 leaver Saim Khan won bronze, missing out on a silver by just one mark.

In addition to their bronze medals, Hisham and Joshua, both from Year 13, won a book, Introduction to Number Theory, by C J Bradley, who was a lecturer at Oxford.

Hisham also won a certificate of distinction for coming in the top 25% in round 2.

Head of Year 13 Akhil Gohil presented Hisham and Joshua with their medals and books in Year 13 assembly.

Four sixth-formers reached the national final of a prestigious competition with their detailed plan for building on the UK’s strengths and resolving its economic woes.

The Year 12 Economics students were among only eight teams from a 173-strong field to make it to the final of the Institute of Economic Affairs and Vinson Centre Budget Challenge.

They had first swept through the initial round to win a place in the semi-final, where they emerged successfully from a face-to-face grilling on their proposals.

Head of Economics Krishna Shah said: “These four students not only demonstrated a strong grasp of current economic conditions, but also set out a credible strategy and some detailed proposals for dealing with the UK’s economic issues. Our congratulations go to all four of them on reaching the final in this well-respected competition.”

Economics is a popular A-level choice at QE. In 2025, 21 candidates secured places to read Economics at university, while ten of the 44 offers of places from Oxbridge this year were for Economics, either on its own, or as part of a wider degree, such as Oxford’s Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) course.

The IEA Budget Challenge aims to help young people: learn more about Economics; sharpen their writing, research and analytical skills; and better understand policy issues facing national decision-makers. There is a top prize of £1,000.

For the first round of the challenge, Peter Atanasov, Shreyas lyengar, Aditya Karmarkar and Ahsan Rahman had to submit a 5,000-word entry giving:

• Their analysis of UK macroeconomic conditions and prospects for the next two years
• An outline of what they considered to be the main economic goals and their broad strategy for pursuing them
• A proposed budget, setting out taxes and other sources of revenue, expected levels of spending by department, and details of expected borrowing (if any).

Their entry secured them one of 12 team places in the semi-final held at the University of Buckingham. Here, they were tasked with creating a presentation on their proposed budget.

They had ten minutes to present their revenue-raising policies, which included a move to asset-based taxation. There were also Government spending measures, such as competition policies and supply-side policies which included spending on education and vocational training.

The four were then subjected to a rapid ten minutes of questions-and-answers from their distinguished panellists Dr Steve Davies, Senior Education Fellow at the IEA (an educational charity and free-market think tank) and Professor Juan Castaneda, Director of the Vinson Centre – a research and knowledge exchange base at Buckingham.

In the final at the IEA’s headquarters in Westminster, the team delivered a presentation on the evaluation of their budget, on alternative methods they could use in the future, and on some constraints they had not considered before.

Afterwards, all four pupils reflected positively on their experience. Ahsan said: “Taking part in competitions like this gives you greater insight into how UK budgets work.” Peter benefitted from “…thinking about and understanding the changing economic landscape towards sustainability”.

Aditya enjoyed developing his teamwork and collaboration skills. And, after facing two rounds of Q&As, Shreyas said: “It certainly helps you develop the way in which you respond to rapid-fire questions under pressure and thinking on the spot!”

While candidates in Barnet and other London boroughs today celebrate their election as councillors or lick their wounds after losing their seats, QE pupil Avi Aggarwal is savouring his own electoral victory.

Year 10’s Avi has been elected to Barnet’s Youth Assembly. It is understood he garnered some 1,800 votes from across the borough’s schools.

Avi will be serving as a Youth Ambassador, seeking to advance financial education in the curriculum in schools across Barnet and beyond.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “I offer my congratulations to Avi and commend him for the initiative he has shown. We wish him every success in his role.

“Ever since Queen Elizabeth I granted our founding charter in 1573 for ‘the establishment of the Free Grammar School of Queen Elizabeth in Barnet’, we have maintained strong local roots at QE: it is therefore great to see pupils taking part in local democracy. It’s also very much in line with being ‘community-orientated’ – one of the six priorities of our Boundless School plan.”

Delivering financial education is a statutory obligation in UK secondary schools. In England, it covers topics such as budgeting, credit & debt, insurance, savings, and pensions. At QE, aspects of personal finance are taught in Maths lessons and, through the Personal Development Time Curriculum, in tutor groups.

Nationally, there is growing recognition across the education system of the need for more innovative and collaborative approaches to ensure pupils gain the financial literacy skills they need for the future.

In a curriculum review that is currently under way, the Government is placing a strong emphasis on strengthening financial literacy in schools as part of its overall aim of giving young people the skills for life and work. The new curriculum is due to be implemented for first teaching from September 2028.

Avi said: “Financial education is something people are always talking about, but which still has a long way to go to give all young people vital skills they need to succeed professionally and financially later in their lives.”

He secured one of two Youth Ambassador seats, fighting off a challenge from four other candidates. He plans to use his new position to lobby for change.

“To help out with the journey, for the last few months I have been campaigning to become Youth Ambassador so that I can create lasting change at both a grassroots level throughout my own borough’s schools and also throughout the rest of the UK through the upcoming 2028 curriculum refresh.”

He will now work to deliver on his campaign’s promises through his two-year term of office.

Barnet Youth Assembly is this year celebrating its tenth year of operation, having been originally established in 2015, before stopping and then re-starting in 2023.

Avi’s friend and fellow Year 10 pupil, Siddharth Kumar, also stood in the election, narrowly missing out on a seat. Siddharth’s manifesto policy was on Improving Transport in Barnet, looking at how roadwork repair could be more efficient, and introducing more cycling and walking pathways, as part of urban greening.