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A Sixth Form team from QE fought off entrants from other top schools to win the international Ritangle Mathematics competition for the second consecutive year.

The eight-strong winning team from Year 12, called Pioneers, were the first of some 1,700 teams to submit the right answer to a series of three crossnumber puzzles. After meticulous checking by the judges in the competition run by education charity MEI (Mathematics, Education, Innovation), they were pronounced this year’s Ritangle Champions.

Furthermore, last year’s winning QE team, Flexangle, came second.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My hearty congratulations go to all who have done well and, in particular, to the Pioneers team. They demonstrated consistency throughout the various stages of competition, as well as speed and accuracy in the final round, in the process besting leading schools both from this country and abroad.”

Ritangle is open to pupils aged 16‌-‌18 studying for A-level Mathematics, or its equivalent. This year’s competition, launched on 25th September, attracted some 500 more entries than last year. It involved three stages.

For the first three weeks of Stage 1, one question was released every Wednesday. Every correct answer revealed a piece of information that helped solve the final task.

In part 2 of Stage 1, a question was released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, prior to the release of the final Stage 1 question. Again, every correct answer helped participants to solve the Final Task.

Stages 2 and 3 followed quickly upon each other, culminating in the final Stage 3 round of crossnumbers set by website Crossnumbers Quarterly.

Besides Flexangle, a further three QE teams reached the final shortlist, which comprised 16 teams from 12 schools who submitted completely correct solutions within 24 hours of the Pioneers team doing so.

The 12 included not only some familiar names, such as Haberdashers’ Boys’ School and King’s College London Mathematics School, but also Doha College (Qatar) and The English School, Nicosia (Cyprus).

It is also understood that all the QE teams were in the top 200. The 19 teams entered is itself thought to be a record from a single institution.

The prize for the overall winners included individual treats as well as a year-long subscription to the Integral mathematics support website and a trophy for the School. The prize was presented by John Brennan-Rhodes from MEI during Year 12 assembly.

The winning Pioneers team are:

• Aryan Kheterpal
• Samrath Sareen
• Sasen Kankanamge Don
• Hisham Khan
• Adithya Raghuraman
• Danyal Talha
• Eesa Malek
• Nayaenesh Jeyabalan

Runners-up (and last year’s winners) Flexangle, of Year 13, are:

• Anshul Nema
• Harik Sodhi
• Koustuv Bhowmick
• Joel Swedensky
• Shreyas Mone

The three other QE teams on the final shortlist are:

Los Desmos Hermanos (Year 12)

• Keshauv Sutharsaraj
• Rishik Siripurapu
• Rithul Shency
• Ayan Hirani
• Maitrayen Srikumar

Desi Derivatives (Year 13)

• Adyan Shahid
• Kovid Gothi
• Vijay Lehto
• Dinuk Dissanayake
• Panth Patel
• Rayan Nadeem
• Arka Gonchoudhuri

The Homeomorphs (Year 12)

• William Joanes
• Akhilesh Karthikeyan
• Pranav Challa
• Ram Chockalingam
• Yash Kedia

The Robert Dudley Studio, QE’s new facility for drama and the spoken word, has been demonstrating its flexibility in a string of events. 

The studio, created from two existing large rooms towards the rear of the Main Building, hosted early rounds of the English Speaking Union’s Schools’ Mace debating contest and of the national Performing Shakespeare competition. 

Two events were held there as part of a new partnership with the English National Ballet, while it was also the venue for a special English lesson exploring dramatic imagery and language. 

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “With the installation of audio-visual equipment, The Robert Dudley Studio has really begun fulfilling its potential for helping us develop oracy in our pupils.” 

At the Mace, the country’s oldest and largest debating competition for schools, a senior QE team – including School Captain Chanakya Seetharam, as well as Zaki Mustafa, and Koustuv Bhowmick, all from Year 13 – took on Haberdashers’ Girls’ School. Other leading schools from North London and Hertfordshire also competed.  The QE team won the event to progress to the second-round heats in January.  

For the Performing Shakespeare competition, every boy in Year 8 learns a speech to perform in class. The 12 winners from across the six Houses fought it out in the School final, held this month in The Robert Dudley Studio (RDS). 

Head of English Robert Hyland said: “There are some things which reading Shakespeare simply as words on the page can never give – so much of the impact of his work comes from how performers have chosen to interpret, following the rhythms and the imagery of the poetry to bring the words to life.  

“Year 8 have done a brilliant job this year in not only choosing a wide range of speeches from across Shakespeare’s plays, but in showing an audience how they understand the text in a way which essay-writing can never replicate.  

The top three performers were:  

• Param Jani, of Underne House, in first place with Is this a dagger I see before me?  from Macbeth 

• Sai Rushil Manchiraju, of Pearce, the runner-up, with Hamlet’s To be or not to be   

• Kavin Rajan, of Harrisons’, who took third place with Henry V’s Once more into the breach dear friends. 

 “The standard overall was very high,” said Mr Hyland. “Param’s speech from Macbeth was a worthy winner, allowing the audience to see and viscerally feel the conflicting emotions and feelings that Macbeth is experiencing at this point in the play.”  

The top two go through to the regional round in the Spring Term.   

The special English lesson held in RDS also focused on Shakespeare, looking at scene 3 from act 3 of The Tempest, where Ariel (under instruction from Prospero) is creating visions for the royal court. Some members of the court are responsible for deposing Prospero from his Dukedom in Milan before the play starts.

Mr Hyland said: “The focus was on the language of the royal court as it was expressing amazement at natural phenomena, and then on how tableaux could be used to depict the key visual moments of the natural world interacting with humanity (Ariel appearing as a harpy, the vanishing banquet, and so on).

“We subsequently returned to the language, thinking about the delivery of the speech which Ariel gives, and what key or words ideas come to light when presented dramatically.”  

Finally, the studio’s versatility came to the fore for the English National Ballet partnership events. 

First, a screening for 30 Year 9 boys of the ENB’s and choreographer Akram Khan’s award-winning production of the classical ballet, Giselle, was held in RDS. Then, the boys toured the ENB’s design and rehearsal studios in Canning Town, learning about the many jobs associated with ballet and meeting some of the creative team behind Giselle.   

ENB dancers and a musician later came to QE and gave the boys a two-hour contemporary ballet workshop, testing the RDS’s audio equipment to the full. They explored ways of moving, inspired by the plot, characters and choreography of Giselle – and all to live beats and rhythms. The boys gained an insight into the coordination, balance and agility needed in ballet. 

Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter said: “It was brilliant to see the studio being used flexibly as both a fantastic surround-sound cinema and then, with the seats retracted, a fantastic dance studio!

“Best of all though was the enthusiasm and energy the boys put into their dancing. Who knows – maybe the next Akram Khan has just learnt his first dance steps? 

“Having a dedicated space for performing arts helps facilitate such work, but also provokes staff to seek out new and creative opportunities for the boys.” 

Year 7 pupil Aarav Kumar has been chosen as Young Geographer of the Year in his age category in the Royal Society of Geography’s prestigious international annual competition.

Having first won the initial QE round, Aarav went on to impress the judges with his colourful, information-packed poster on the theme of Choose Geography.

Geography teacher and Enrichment tutor Eleanor Barrett said: “Aarav’s well-researched work perfectly captured the essence of Choose Geography, highlighting how the subject empowers us to understand the world and address its challenges. His win is a fantastic achievement, and we are thrilled to see his talent and hard work recognised at such a prestigious level.”

Pupils aged from seven to 18 were invited to create posters that demonstrated the relevance of Geography and how studying it can help those studying understand the world we live in and the global challenges we face as a society.

The competition aims to inspire young people to engage with Geography and show its importance in addressing issues such as climate change, sustainability, and biodiversity loss.

With schools hosting their own heats and submitting only their winners, the 1,000 entries received by the society represented just a fraction of the overall number of participating pupils.

In a ceremony hosted at the Royal Society of Geography in central London, two winners and two runners-up were announced for each age group – and Aarav was announced as one of the winners in the Key Stage 2 (7-11) category. He is pictured here with other winners in the various age groups.

His poster, which centred around his drawing of the earth, included several features:

• Brief profiles of several Geography-related jobs, including cartographer and climatologist, under the heading ‘Want fun, good-paying, creative jobs related to the world: look here!’
• A summary of ‘the geographer’s mindsets’ , divided into the following categories: ‘create’, ‘evaluate’, ‘apply’, ‘discover’ and ‘understand’
• Descriptions of the educational benefits of taking the subject, including a look at Geography GCSE and A-level.

The society’s director, Professor Joe Smith, praised the quality of the entries: “The students have clearly demonstrated how geographical skills and thinking are vital for addressing global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss.”

In a year in which political power has changed hands on both sides of the Atlantic, QE Politics students had the chance to find out more about elections on a visit to Westminster.

Twenty sixth-formers headed to London for a tour of the Palace of Westminster, also enjoying an interactive workshop on elections run by the UK Parliament’s education department.

Politics teacher Liam Hargadon said: “QE students were able to impress the staff of the department with their knowledge of the legislation process, as well as the history of the UK constitution.”

For Year 12’s Sejal Bobba, finding out more about elections was a definite highlight: “The informative and eye-opening interactive workshop where, as teams, we learnt and executed different areas contributing to a successful party and campaigning machine was really the cherry on the top of an absorbing day.”

The A-level Politics course requires pupils to understand the workings of the main institutions of UK government, and how these institutions relate together. The visit aimed to bring boys’ classroom work and independent study on this to life.

Prior to the tour of the palace, boys had a walking tour of Whitehall and Westminster, during which they saw some major Government departments and passed the UK Supreme Court. In Parliament Square, they noted all the statues of significant political figures, from UK Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli, and suffragist Millicent Fawcett, to international statesmen Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.

The tour took in the chambers of the House of Commons and House of Lords. The party, accompanied by Mr Hargadon and another Politics teacher, Samuel Neagus, walked through the royal robing room and gallery, as well as the Central Lobby.

They paused for a photo in Westminster Hall – the 927-year-old hall sometimes used for joint addresses to both chambers of Parliament and for the lying-in-state of notable political leaders and members of the Royal Family.

Their visit coincided with the Armistice Day ceremonial around the Cenotaph. “Being in Parliament Square for the traditional silence was a particularly moving experience,” said Mr Neagus.

Reflecting on the day, Sejal said: “We comprehensively explored the much-ignored but important layers that contribute to our Government, such as the Whitehall executive, the Lords and the individuals commemorated in Parliament Square.”

Year 13’s Robin Vickers added: “Our visit to Parliament showed us much about the history of the British governmental system, from the Remembrance Day activities in Whitehall to the tour, which took us to the oldest part of Parliament, Westminster Hall.

“Seeing the chambers up close, with the Strangers’ Gallery, along with the workshop following the tour, has encouraged me to participate more in Parliamentary goings-on.”

As delegates from around the world discuss critical environmental matters at COP29 in Azerbaijan, two QE sixth-formers have come seventh out of 37,000 entries in the Climate Science Olympiad.

With the international olympiad open to people aged up to 25, Andreas Angelopolous and Saim Khan fought off competition from undergraduate & postgraduate students and potentially from young climate professional scientists to claim their place.

Scoring in the final was extremely tight, with the 87.0 points awarded for Andreas and Saim’s 3,000-word essay on the Kyrgyz Republic’s food system only 1.4 points behind the fourth-placed entry. (The scores of the top three entries are being revealed in Baku at COP29, the UN’s climate summit).

Deputy Head (Academic) Anne Macdonald said: “For two school-age students to have secured such success against significantly older entrants sets this apart as a truly outstanding achievement. It’s really an unbelievable feat, made believable only because we know how brilliant they both are!”

Both Saim and Andreas were part of the QE team that recorded a top ten finish in the international finals of the World Economics Cup, having previously come first in Europe in the Continental Round.

The qualifier round and quarter-finals for the Climate Science Olympiad comprised a 25-minute online quiz involving multiple-choice questions. The semi-finals involved writing a 1,000-word essay on three key themes, namely energy, development and natural systems.

In the finals, entrants were set the task of writing a longer essay on a complex global problem.

Once it was submitted, they had two online interviews: each involved giving a 15 min presentation and then answering questions from a panel of scientists, innovators and policymakers for five–ten minutes.

The second interview was for the top 20 entrants online.  During this, entrants had to demonstrate they had responded to some of the feedback from the first panel.

In their essay, the pair wrote that they were presenting “a comprehensive approach towards creating a resilient and equitable food system in the Kyrgyz Republic”. Their systems-oriented solution included promoting capital investment; encouraging research and promoting collaboration among farmers; and a focus on water supply. The collaboration included farmers from the neighbouring country of Uzbekistan working with the Kyrgyz counterparts. The Uzbek government even provided feedback on Saim and Andreas’s proposal praising its “incredible detail for the monitoring and regulatory frameworks, which is of course vital for socio-economic change”. The Uzbek government also stated: “Promoting public, private and international financing are all crucial, and it is especially important to tie them into a single coherent system which gives confidence to all through regulation, which this entry clearly recognises.”

Andreas and Saim were awarded gold certificates and prize money of $1,000.

Year 11 pupil Paarth Aggarwal has been named the UK winner in a global artificial intelligence competition run by technology giant Intel.

Parth took the national title in the AI Changemakers ages 13–18 category after impressing judges in the Intel AI Global Impact Festival 2024 with his multilingual GenAI-powered NavigateNinja app.

The app harnesses storytelling in a natural voice and animated video to offer personalised learning to children with autism and related conditions.

His victory, which brings prizes worth £1,000, is his second major competition success of the year: in the Summer Term, he won the European Space Agency’s Climate Detectives challenge with his AI-driven study into tackling electronic waste in Barnet.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My sincere congratulations go to Paarth on this latest success – a splendid achievement. I am encouraged not only to see his obvious mastery of AI, but also to recognise that, in line with our School ethos, he has put this exciting technology to use in ways that seek to make the world a better place.”

The competition drew thousands of entries from across the world, with Paarth’s entry being one of 111 projects to reach the global stages.

He spent many hours researching, developing, and refining the project. His app provides unique content across different subjects, based on skill level; it aims to enhance comprehension and information retention.

“Children with autism and several other similar conditions may have trouble with learning through conventional methods,” he said. “…My vision is to empower autistic children by globally launching this app and keep on adding new features like personalised avatars, voices, scenes, ‘gamification’ etc. to make learning fun, engaging and rewarding.”

Paarth used Intel Core Ultra Processor for its strong graphics and fast rendering times for complex animations. He also deployed the OpenVINO toolkit running on Intel Dev Cloud to execute AI models at scale.

His proud dad, Saurabh Aggarwal, said: “This victory is a testament to the excellent education and continuous support Paarth has been receiving from the School and his teachers.” News of Paarth’s success would, he hoped “encourage more and more students to explore the world of AI, inspire them to become the next generation of AI innovators, and realise the limitless possibilities it holds for their careers”.

• Discover further details of Paarth’s competition entry here.