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Fired up by his own struggles in getting into Law, Izzet Hassan, who now works at one of the five so-called Magic Circle City firms, has set up his own online network to advise others seeking to follow in his footsteps.

While at QE, Izzet (OE 2005-2012) was captain of the tennis team and a noted rugby player. He then read Law at Warwick before going on to take a Master’s degree in Philosophy at Cambridge.

After working at various law firms as a paralegal and in their vacation schemes, Izzet won a training contract with Slaughter and May, where he started in September 2018.

Today, as well as his job as a Future Trainee Solicitor, he runs the Aspiring Commercial Lawyers Network (ACLN), which he set up on Facebook during the autumn of 2019.

“ACLN is a platform designed to help students, graduates and aspiring lawyers break into the legal profession,” he says. “As the first member of my family to go to university, I had to learn the hard way how difficult it is to secure an entry-level position in the field of commercial law.

“My aim is to use the knowledge I have accumulated over the years to help others break into this field.”

The group has expanded rapidly and in its first four months topped 1,000 members.

Izzet is also becoming very well-known on LinkedIn, dispensing nuggets of both general life advice based on his own experience as well as specific guidance for those aiming for a top career in Law.

Writing in February, Izzet said: “My exposure on LinkedIn has grown exponentially over the last two months. Following a few viral posts which have been viewed by almost half a million people, I have become very active in the legal sphere.

“I believe that LinkedIn, as a social media platform, offers an organic reach that is second only to Twitter.

“This, combined with its academic/professional exposure, allows me to advise aspiring lawyers and chime into legal discussions on a much larger scale than would be possible otherwise.”

Here is one recent example of his posts:

• “I am delighted to announce that I have passed my Stage 1 LPC exams.

The LPC happened to coincide with a very difficult time in my life; at times, it felt as though I was being attacked from every possible angle.

When you’re experiencing adversity, sometimes it is very difficult to see beyond the pain you are suffering.

During times like these, I often think about my greatest fears in life and draw strength from the fact that no matter how bad things may seem, they are still nothing compared to what I fear most.

I don’t believe that life gets any easier; I believe we just become stronger and more resilient over time.

How do you deal with adversity?”

Izzet also pays tribute to the support he received from the specialists at Rare Recruitment, billed on their own website as ‘leaders in diversity graduate recruitment’.

“Rare Recruitment were a great resource for me when I was applying,” he says. “The organisation aims to help aspiring lawyers from less privileged backgrounds break into the legal sphere. I benefited greatly from their support, application reviews and mock interviews.”

Having had a long-term interest in investing, Izzet has developed expertise in property and in CFD (Contract for Difference) trading.

“CFD trading is a relatively new form of derivatives trading which allows investors to speculate on the price of the underlying assets. For example, trading gold has historically been very expensive, however, trading CFD gold contracts allows investors to speculate on the price of the underlying gold assets, without actually having to buy the gold itself.

“I am currently developing an algorithm which will allow me to automate the trading process so that I can trade ‘passively’.

“In terms of property, I am very early in my investing career and have spent a lot of time educating myself on various models, particularly the ‘serviced accommodation’ model. By attending regular networking events, I have formed connections with a number of investors and other property investors which I believe will facilitate my progress.”

Izzet visited the School in 2018, along with his QE contemporary, Suraj Sangani, to speak to boys in Years 11-13 as part of the Senior Lecture Programme about how to pursue a career in Law.

Izzet was scheduled to be the guest speaker at the 55th Annual Elizabethan Union Dinner Debate, which had to be called off because of the pandemic.

Simon Dyton went on to become a School Captain under Eamonn Harris and then to gain a Double First and a PhD studying English and History at Cambridge – but his first encounter with QE’s then-Headmaster was far from auspicious.

“He largely ignored me and spoke to my parents,” says Simon (OE 1997–1994; School Captain 1993). “My father said, ‘Why don’t you talk to Simon?’ Mr Harris said to him sternly: ‘I can fix a naughty boy, but I cannot fix a naughty parent.’”

Later, however, Simon learned lessons both from Mr Harris and from other QE teachers that have stood him in good stead for his current role as an English teacher in the Upper School at the Marymount School of New York, a nursery-to-high school for girls on Fifth Avenue.

“The students at Marymount recently voted to have me speak to my school’s National Honor Society and share some scholarly advice. I was immediately reminded of a lesson I learned from Eamonn Harris. He once told me that the most important thing in life was ‘kissing the plan’, by which he meant that ‘doing a little bit’ every day was the best way to get a job done. That has stuck with me.

“I never thought that I’d be using my experiences of English lessons at QE to design my own classes, but the experiences of being taught by Mr [Eric] Houston and Mr [David] Jones proved very useful.

“Mr Cossey was also a fantastic example of passionate teaching. His furious roaring (and slamming of desks) over Harold II’s anger at William the Conqueror stayed with me for years. I love sharing my enthusiasm for storytelling and my enjoyment of language and literature with my students.”

“I remember Mr Houston making a boy stand against a wall in the Science block for ‘not behaving like a good chap’. This is when I started to sense that the school was being hoisted up by its socks into a new kind of institution. I loved the school trips to Moscow and St. Petersburg with Mr [Tom] Guthrie. I met my first Russian gangsters, held my first handgun, and — in a more trusting age of air travel — sat in the cockpit and lowered the landing-gear when we landed back in England.

“I loved being School Captain: organising Founder’s Day was a fantastic challenge.”

After A-levels, Simon took up a place at Gonville and Caius College. “When I went up to Cambridge, my main model for life at university was The Young Ones television show. I had been looking forward to learning alongside girls for the first time, but Caius didn’t admit any female students to read English that year, so I was stuck with more boys. I played rugby and rowed.”

Following his graduation, he stayed on at Caius for an MPhil and a PhD. “My doctorate involved exploring representations of early modern religious radicalism and grew out of a love of John Milton, whose Paradise Lost I first read in A-level English with Mr Houston.”

In those post-graduate years, he recalls enjoying lunch and drinks with Eamonn Harris in The Eagle, the 17th-century Cambridge pub where, in 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick famously first spoke of their discovery of the structure of DNA. “He was excellent company and was really enjoying retirement.”

Simon served as the MCR [Middle Combination Room] President and introduced graduate seminars that continued, in one shape or another, for years. “I loved my time at Gonville and Caius College. I made some excellent friends, and friendships have been the source of memories that I value the most.

“As a graduate student, I really enjoyed teaching undergraduates, but I loved working with teenagers on summer schools—first on a Cambridge University outreach scheme and then for a New York-based company that operated academic summer schools all over Europe. After several years, I visited New York to work for that company on a short-term work visa, which ultimately turned into a Green Card, by which time I was running summer schools and hiring teachers from all over the world to teach everything from Anthropology to Zoology—mostly in Oxford and Cambridge.

“Eventually, I decided that I wanted to teach full-time, so I looked into teaching and joined the Marymount School here in New York. I’ve had no real masterplan or strategy behind my career path. I’ve always enjoyed studying, writing, coaching, and teaching. I am a long-time believer in reading widely, thinking broadly, and finding the happiness in life. I’ve pursued a career that I enjoy and that I find satisfying.”

Among the many highlights of this career, he recalls one recent, somewhat “terrifying”, example: “The students voted for me to take half-court shots during the high school’s Spirit Week pep rally. (Spirit Week, by the way, is a week of morale-boosting activities designed to help the students through the post-Christmas gloom.) I think it was Mr [David] Maughan and Mr Clarke who coached basketball, but nothing prepared me for hundreds of students chanting, ‘Dr. D, Dr. D!'”

Another highlight of his life stateside recurs daily as he savours his walk home each day across Central Park.

“When I arrived in New York, I was told that it was a great place to spend some of my 20s (I was 28) and all of my money, but—now that I’m in my 40s—I’ve found a happy place on the Upper West Side with my wife, Meredith, and dog. I feel very fortunate that I can live and teach in a city that’s incredibly diverse. I recall that I did a project on Kyrgyzstan for Mr Guthrie in A-level Russian, but it’s only in New York that I finally met a Kyrgyz horseman, who was stunt-riding for the circus. You never know who you’ll meet, and everyone has an interesting story.”

He is now a US citizen. “My wife and I spend our vacations in the deserts of southern Utah, on the beaches of the Virginia coast, and in the forests of upstate New York. I appreciate hard work, good fortune, personal wellness, and physical fitness.”

After graduating from Cambridge, Marco Miglio took a long, hard look at the opportunities open to him in the commercial world – and decided to go in another direction altogether.

He recently began a new post working for an NHS Crisis Resolution Team, which involves directly helping people suffering from severe mental health problems.

Marco (OE 2007-2014) says: “Every day feels like an opportunity to make an impact on someone and I wake up looking forward to going into work, which I never thought could be possible.”

He first became interested in this area while studying for his undergraduate degree in Human, Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge and taking a few psychology modules. After he graduated and came back to London, he took a Master’s degree in Social and Cultural Psychology at LSE.

“Whilst doing my Master’s, I did short stints at big consulting companies such as Bain and PwC – and found corporate culture unfulfilling. Many of my friends from university were contemplating careers in law, banking and consultancy, and none of these felt like a natural fit for me.

“I felt so lucky to have received some of the best education in the country and wanted to utilise this to empower and benefit those most in need, and so I tried to get as far away from corporate life as possible and found a job in mental health.

“My first job in mental health was working for a charity for a year-and-a-half that runs care homes for men with criminal histories who also have mental health problems. This job felt like a perfect fit for me, and over time, I realised that the work that came most naturally to me was dealing with acutely unwell, violent and risky patients.”

His new post, as an assistant practitioner within Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust’s Crisis Resolution Team, felt “like a natural progression” from his previous role.

Marco explained a little about what his job entails: “Each NHS trust commissions multiple crisis teams, and at the minute I work in the North Camden Crisis Team, based in Belsize Park. The crisis team work with some of the most acutely unwell people in the local area: usually our caseload tends to have up to 40 people, most of whom are actively psychotic and suicidal.

“My working week is split between conducting home visits to our caseload, and working on the Crisis Team Single Point of Access phone lines. When I’m out doing home visits, a major part of this is to assess the risk levels of our patients (which is usually very high and so needs to be monitored in case it changes and they become too risky to keep themselves safe), provide brief supportive counselling, supervising their medication and helping them get referred to local mental health services offered by the NHS or charities.

“Unfortunately, sometimes our patients are so suicidal that they are beyond our remit and we have to push for them to be taken to A&E or to be sectioned for their own wellbeing.

“The remainder of the week I work in what is called the Single Point of Access phone line, in which we triage and accept referrals from patients, their GPs, family members, and the police. We take these clients on and then work with them to get them out of their mental health crises.

“A small part of this role is de-escalating our distressed patients and effectively ‘talking them off the ledge’, as it were, to try to keep them safe until our team is able to work with them. Ending a phone call with a patient who initially phoned saying they were about to take their own life but now says that they feel able to keep themselves safe makes me truly appreciate the importance of the work that we do, and despite how emotionally demanding it can be, I know it’s one of the most necessary jobs, especially in a time when mental illness affects more of us than ever before.

“Whilst working in mental health is incredibly rewarding, it’s not a job I’d recommend to everyone. (All the teams I’ve worked with so far have joked that the job is so stressful and draining that you’d have to be slightly mad yourself to want to work in the sector.) Rotating shift patterns are exhausting; verbal abuse and death threats from patients are extremely common; I’ve seen colleagues get attacked, and have been in quite a few sticky situations myself. That said, I wouldn’t have it any other way and feel lucky to have a job that I genuinely enjoy.

“In terms of my long-term goals, I’m thinking of becoming a child and adolescent psychotherapist. Most of my work so far has been with severely unwell people, and in future I’d really like to start working with patients at the opposite end of the spectrum, who are experiencing their first symptoms of mental illness and to try and help them explore the reasons behind these symptoms and work with them to help them recover before they develop chronic mental illnesses.”

Marco spoke of the important role fellow QE alumni continue to play in his life. “Given the intense nature of the job and how understaffed and overworked NHS staff are, having a good support network outside of work has been really important in maintaining my own wellbeing.

“I’m extremely lucky to have such a supportive network of family and friends around me, some of whom are Old Elizabethans. There are a group of about ten of us who still see each other most weeks, and we go on holiday every summer, and it has been a privilege to remain so close to them and watch them go into jobs where they’re making a difference.”

Jake Nielen is revelling in his role within an industry enjoying explosive growth and operating at the forefront of a technological revolution.

Jake (OE 2004–2011) is a London-based account manager with Amazon Web Services, helping financial technology (FinTech) startups rapidly achieve global scale and huge customer growth through applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

On graduating from Cambridge, he joined Egon Zehnder, a top-three executive search firm focused on board-level appointments for FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 customers.

“After two years working across various industrial and financial services clients, I moved to do the same role at Amazon, ultimately specialising in finding and convincing some of the best technical minds around the world to build some of the largest distributed technical systems in the world, and solve some of the hardest AI/ML challenges across Amazon Retail, Amazon Prime Video, Alexa, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and even Amazon’s Operations business.

“Whilst in that role it became obvious that AWS was exploding in terms of growth. It currently stands at $36bn revenue globally, growing at 36% year-on-year, which has never been done before in the history of technology services. (We have 19k in the sales team with 12k open roles for next year!).

“In addition to that, we are adding a new feature or product every three hours (2500-plus last year alone), and the pace of change and ability to work in an industry that is revolutionising and democratising how millions of customers around the world consume and process data was too good to pass up.

“I’ve since joined the Startups team, focusing on helping FinTech customers (Monzo, Transferwise, Nutmeg, etc.) get the best out of our services and support those types of customers as they scale globally and offer new services to millions of new customers around the world.”

Among highlights from earlier in his career he would include working on the process to appoint the new Chairman of the Government-owned Royal Bank of Scotland. Another was rebuilding the Prime Video technical leadership team, which last year launched live-streaming of the Premiership in the UK.

“More recently, it has been helping two of my customers win deals with FTSE 100 businesses and supporting [banking start-up] Tide to grow to over 100k small-business users in the UK as well as [helping them towards] international expansion in the near future.”

At School, Jake was a notable sportsman, playing for the First XV and also involved in athletics, water-polo and cross-country.

He vividly recalls “the trials and tribulations of the U16 Sevens and XV rugby teams – the wins and losses and the team-building that came about as a result of an ‘aggressive’ fitness regime based on a strategy that if we couldn’t run through or round our opponents, we would just have to run further and work harder”.

“More generally, I’ve got good memories of constantly being flagged down in the corridor for having my top button undone, the pain of the ‘elephant dip’, the relentless number of A3 grids in Geography.” He confesses to having occasionally been guilty of putting off difficult homework – “deferring it all to an hour before and having to work in the atrium on top of the lockers”.

“But,” he says, “most of all, I have good memories of the dedicated teaching staff who worked above and beyond to provide a top-tier education to anyone, regardless of background, for free.”

He especially praises current Headmaster Neil Enright, who taught him Geography, and his form teacher, Tahmer Mahmoud. Jake, who went on to take a First in Geography at St Catharine’s College, continues to apply Mr Enright’s “organisational capabilities and standards” to this day. “I still colour-code and underline headings on my work.”

“Mr Mahmoud…taught me to intellectually stretch myself to think bigger during form time (‘If you drop a ball, how can you be sure it will always fall to the ground? On what basis do you think the colour red looks the same for you as it is for me?’).”

At Cambridge, his dissertation was on community perceptions of volunteer ‘gap year tourists’ in Ethiopia (“which I loved”).

He remains close friends with a group of OEs – “essentially everyone you see in this picture” [right], taken at Allianz Park, home of Saracens, for the QE First XV’s match against Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School in 2017. Old Elizabethans pictured are top row, left, to bottom right: Alex Grethe, Jake, Anton Bridge, Ioannis Loupas (all 2004-2011); Anoop Raghaven and Max Hassell, (both 2002–2009); Alvin Bombo (2002–2007); Gideon Levitt (2004–2011); Aaron Levitt (2002–2009); Matteo Yoon, Adam Kuo, Alex Goring (all 2003–2010), and Francis Vu (2000–2008).

“The other photos show us all wearing our QE First XV tops in Japan when we went to visit for the Rugby World Cup.”

Jake’s ambition is, he says, “to continue to learn and always be curious, to push myself out of my comfort zone every day, and to continue to do the hard things well. I’ll probably stay at AWS until I come across a Fintech that seems interesting enough to leap in to (in the interests of being curious).”

The Autumn Term started with Queen Elizabeth’s School in good heart following another set of exceptional exam results.

QE has subsequently been named the country’s leading state school for the second consecutive year by the Sunday Times’s respected Parent Power survey, a position we have now held for five of the past seven years.

In fact, Parent Power revealed that not only were we the top state school, but were among a mere handful of top-performing schools of any stripe, selective or comprehensive, state or fee-paying. Nationwide, just four independent schools matched QE’s 95.7% figure for the proportion of A-levels passed at A*-B. Remarkable as our boys’ performance this summer certainly was, there is a further aspect that is not apparent from the league tables, and that is the extraordinary long-term consistency in our A-level results: 2019 was the 14th consecutive year in which the A*-B figure has remained above the 95% threshold.

This extended record of achievement thus goes back to the headmastership of my immediate predecessor, Dr John Marincowitz. But John would, I am sure, agree with me that the platform for our exceptional results was built under the leadership of his predecessor, Eamonn Harris (Headmaster 1984-1999), the sad news of whose passing we received last month.

The ongoing programme of improvement to our facilities begun during Eamonn’s tenure continues. Our project to build a new Music School is on track, with the demolition of the Mayes Building to clear the site completed successfully over the summer. We are currently working on plans to fit out the building, including consideration of interior design. A full tender process for the project will be launched in the spring so that work can start in July next year, once public examinations are over.

This has been a busy term for Music, and for the arts in general, with a full programme of concerts and performances. Sergio Ronchetti (OE 2004-2011), who is a freelance composer and sound designer enjoying success in the gaming sector, visited to deliver a careers lecture to senior boys. After leaving school, Sergio first worked for four years as a professional musician, only then going to Goldsmiths, where he took a First in Music.

The boys participated very successfully in the Shakespeare Schools Festival, performing The Merchant of Venice (pictured above right). Such events are tremendously important not only in enhancing School life in general but also in the development of confident, rounded individuals.

Our new catering arrangements have met with widespread approval from the boys, who appreciate the additional choice and better presentation, the theme days and food demonstrations. The food served now has improved environmental credentials in response to feedback: there is reduced packaging and improved sorting of waste, while our new caterers, Holroyd Howe, are diligently making ethical choices with regards to their own suppliers and the food products that they sell here.

QE recently took on St Albans in a special match marking 100 years since the first encounter between the two schools. The game in 1919, which QE won, was St Albans’ very first fixture, while QE had itself only been playing the sport for a few years. At the centenary match, which St Albans won 36-19, I presented St Albans with this photo (right) of the Elizabethan team from the following season, 1920-21, the earliest rugby team photo that either school possesses.

I was honoured to be invited to give a speech at the Girls’ Schools Association’s Annual Conference for Heads, where I explained our emphasis on creating a culture that nurtures free-thinking scholarship. Of course, if we are to sustain such a culture, we must not rest on our laurels. As we look to the future, we have been gathering feedback from both parents and pupils to inform our next exciting development plan, which will drive the School forward over the next four years. That period includes the 450th anniversary of the School, which we celebrate in 2023, and is personally significant for me, since within this time I will mark a decade of my headship and two decades since I first began working at QE.

We are now in the last year of the current School plan, covering 2016–2020. It is still proving highly relevant; we continue to actively pursue its aims. For example, it was with Enhancing future prospects in mind – one of the plan’s four priority areas – that we launched our inaugural university mock interview evening, which was supported by a considerable number of alumni.

The School’s online presence continues to develop. As many old boys will already know, QE Connect, our new online community for Old Elizabethans, was launched earlier this term and has met with a good initial response. We have many plans to develop it. People from across the wider Elizabethan community also seem to be enjoying interacting with our new QE Instagram and Facebook accounts.

Ivin Jose has been chosen as our 2020 School Captain and is pictured above with his senior team.

My best wishes to all Old Elizabethans for an enjoyable Christmas holiday and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Neil Enright, Headmaster

Dr Frederick Baker has won a major EU cultural award for an innovative, large-scale digital project telling the story of the run-up to the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria, the so-called Anschluss.

He led a team of filmmakers, historians and programmers involved in the project, which reached thousands of users via the internet, radio, television, and mobile phones, as well as through analogue media such as postcards, lectures, and print. In addition, it was the first digital exhibition on the website of the new Austrian Museum of History in Vienna.

And, in a move of political significance marking the 80th anniversary of the events, the work was projected on to the walls of the current-day Chancellery on the Ballhausplatz in the centre of Vienna in a presentation that included films, photographs and sound recording. During the annexation, this building was the scene of a power struggle between the local Nazis (following orders from Berlin) and the last Austrian President.

“The work is called the History Radar ‘Zeituhr 1938’ and is a web platform describing the key 24 hours in the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938,” said Fred (OE 1976-1983), who added that the Chancellery was the Austrian “equivalent of Number 10 Downing Street”.

Born in Salzburg but brought up in London, Fred studied Anthropology and Archaeology at St John’s College, Cambridge, Tübingen and Sheffield universities and went on to gain a PhD from Cambridge in 2009. He was a Producer Director for the BBC, working for the corporation from 1994 to 2006. He is the owner of the Austrian film company, Filmbäckerei, and a College Research Association at the Centre for Film and Screen Media, Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Following the success of the project during the 80th anniversary period last year, it was announced this year that it had won the European Heritage Award/Europa Nostra Award in the Education, Training and Awareness-Raising category. The project was one of only seven to be named as one of the awards’ Grand Prix.

Fred received his award and a cheque for €10,000 from Placido Domingo, President of Europa Nostra, and Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, who co-hosted the recent major awards ceremony.

In his acceptance speech, Fred said: “This [project] was 100 per cent Austrian-funded…and I think that says something for the right side of Austria and the correct side of Austria and those who… stood up and are the winners in the end. Thank you very much for this really amazing prize which will help us a lot to carry on and give us support in difficult times.”

In their citation, the awards jury praised the project’s “impressively designed, interactive, web-portal that enhances the user experience and which is especially attractive for young users.

“This project has used innovative media to cast new light on pivotal historical moments in which crucial political decisions were taken. Curiosity was the driving force that provoked this historical storytelling, evoking the collective memory of eyewitnesses. The project’s pioneering technology allows for the constructive mediation of historical events.”

“This innovative approach enables a more nuanced understanding of individual responsibilities in securing democracy and the common values of society. It expresses the dangers of organised propaganda, which, in combination with a compliant media system, can encroach on democratic values and foster unfounded cultural and social bias,” the jury stated.

In a speech at the awards ceremony, Guillaume Poitrinal, President of Fondation du Patrimoine (France’s Heritage Foundation) highlighted the significance of the event: “We all believe here that Europe is not just about economics, Europe is not just about a single currency, Europe is not just about a common market: Europe is also about a common culture.”

The History Radar ‘Zeituhr 1938’ project was produced by Filmbäckerei, in co-operation with Dr Heidemarie Uhl, Dr Michaela Raggam-Blesch, Dr Eva Gressel and Pauli Aro at the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, with digital engineering by Thomas Prieler (Web-Tech) Christoph Kovacs/ Gernot Huber (Sensotix) and design Raimund Schumacher (Lost in the Garden).

Funding came from the Memorial Year 2018 fund of the Austrian Federal Chancellery, the Austrian National Fund of the Victims of Fascism, Austrian Future Funds, City of Vienna Student Research Scholarship funds, the Academy of Sciences and the Haus der Geschichte Österreich.

Fred is the winner of numerous awards – including a previous Europa Nostra Award for work done with Cambridge University – and is renowned for his work as a pioneer of immersive reality. A virtual reality experience based on the work of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt last year proved immensely popular with experts and the public alike. Having first won a Silver Medal for Cinematic Virtual Reality at the European Virtual Reality Halo Awards in Amsterdam, its run at Vienna’s MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) was extended by nearly six months and it was then staged at the Palais des Beaux-Arts (also known as BOZAR) in Brussels.

Former Headmaster Eamonn Harris, who is widely credited with saving Queen Elizabeth’s from closure and then overseeing its transformation into a successful grammar school, died last month. He was 76 and had been unwell for some time.

The School is planning to celebrate his life and contribution by hosting a commemorative event on Saturday 21st March 2020, to which all alumni are welcome. Further details will follow in the New Year, but if you are interested in attending, please click the button now to let us know by email – remembering to include your full name.

At the start of his headship in 1984, Mr Harris inherited an underfunded comprehensive school with falling rolls, poor academic results and demoralised staff. Over the next 15 years, he set about introducing change into almost every aspect of School life, often in the face of fierce political opposition.

By the time he retired in 1999, QE had become one of the finest state grammar schools in the country, providing a platform from which his successors were able to take the School to the position of pre-eminence it enjoys today.

Current Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It is no overstatement to say that without Eamonn’s unwavering commitment and redoubtable leadership, the School may have ceased to exist and would certainly not have flourished in the way that it has since.

“His tenure was characterised by the bold decisions and high expectations which are the foundations of the School’s present success.

“Of course, Eamonn had a considerable impact on the lives of so many Old Elizabethans – a fact that has been underlined by the many messages and tributes we have received in recent weeks from alumni living all around the world.” A private family funeral has already taken place.

Mr Harris was appointed in October 1983, having taught for ten years at a tough school in Croydon and then at Samuel Whitbread Community College in Bedfordshire, where he was deputy head.

It was only after his appointment – but before he took up his post in January 1984 – that he learned that the local authority had scheduled QE for closure in two years’ time.

The School at the time was badly undersubscribed, with a mere handful of parents actually requesting it as their first choice. In September 1984, only 133 places out of the 180 available were filled. Not only were academic results poor, with few boys going on to good universities, but behaviour also left a great deal to be desired, and QE pupils had acquired a reputation in Barnet town centre for being rowdy and noisy.

He set to work with his customary energy, and the transformation quickly began, with one of his first measures being to ensure boys stayed on site at lunchtime while the behavioural issues were tackled.

Within just two years, the School was effectively oversubscribed, as, in September 1986, the number of successful parental appeals against refused places meant that the intake exceeded the School’s official roll.

One major challenge that quickly emerged was the state of the School’s finances. The School was not getting its fair share of the Local Education Authority’s budget.

Mr Harris therefore pressed hard to take advantage of the new freedom schools were given in 1988 by the Conservative government to opt out of LEA control and become Grant-Maintained Schools, funded directly by a grant from central government. It was a controversial move, opposed by the local Conservative-run council.

Mr Harris, however, was tenacious and the School achieved Grant-Maintained status in 1989. He explained why to his successor as Headmaster, John Marincowitz, in an interview conducted in 2015 as part of Dr Marincowitz’s research for a forthcoming history of the School. “I believed that I was responsible for my patch, my school, and to do all I could to make it a successful place. If all heads did the same schools would improve and standards rise.”

He took a holistic approach to the transformation of the School, combining vision and drive with clarity of thought, a willingness to try new ideas and considerable attention to detail. While there was certainly a focus on teaching and monitoring of performance, ostensibly smaller matters were not neglected, either: uniform policy was, for example, properly enforced, and the School campus was better maintained, with shrubs and flowers planted.

The result was a cultural sea-change, with staff re-energised and motivated, and expectations raised. It was Mr Harris who reformulated the School’s mission: “to produce boys who are confident, able and responsible”.

Professional standards were introduced into areas such as staff development, IT and finance: the School acquired Investors in People status in 1996, while in 1998 QE was named Supreme Winner of the National Training Awards.

Extra-curricular provision received considerable attention, with notable successes achieved in national Young Enterprise competitions, rugby and water-polo.

In the early 1990s, taking advantage of another new freedom for schools, he drove the process which led to the Secretary of State granting the Governors’ petition to allow the School to apply a fully selective admissions policy once again in September 1994, thus reversing the move to comprehensive status some three decades earlier.

Following an Ofsted inspection in 1995, the Education Secretary, Gillian Shepherd, wrote to Mr Harris informing him that the inspectors had found QE to be “an outstandingly successful secondary school”.

The Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s (FQE), which had remained loyal during the School’s decline, was reinvigorated, and fundraising reached hitherto unseen heights in the last years of his headship. Without recourse to either local or central government funding, an amount of nearly £3 million was spent on new buildings – a Sixth Form block (the Heard Building), five Science laboratories and a Music block.

By the time he retired in 1999, after suffering ill-health following a bout of pneumonia, the School had in very large measure been transformed, with examination results strongly in the ascendant and the School’s reputation fully restored.

At his retirement, a Governors’ tribute penned by Dr Marincowitz said this of Mr Harris: “He inherited a school which was struggling to fill 150 places. He leaves his School one of the most sought-after and outstanding boys’ schools in the country. It is so because of his leadership, courage and commitment.”

With an increased number of talks this year, and standing room only in many of them, the 2019 Year 11 Careers Convention has been hailed as a great success – thanks largely to the support of Old Elizabethans.

Representatives from 35 different companies and organisations, featuring a good mix of alumni and other visitors, met boys and their parents as Year 11 were starting to consider their future career paths.

Professions represented ranged from medicine to app development, and from chemical engineering to the law.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It was another tremendous evening and we are always very grateful to all those OEs who give up their time to come back and help out our current students. The boys benefit immeasurably from the advice that they receive, not least because seeing alumni thriving in their various careers is in itself a source of inspiration and confidence to them.

“At this stage in their education, it is as important for the boys to develop the soft skills they will need when planning for life after school – in order that they can actually achieve their desired outcomes – as it is to provide insight into the many different options available to them.”

The main Careers Convention was held in the Shearly Hall, while the nine talks – several of which were repeated three times during the course of the evening – were delivered in classrooms. The talks included popular career areas, such as Dr Nirmal Wilwaraarachchi (OE 1996-2002) on dentistry and Joseph Vinson (OE 2007-2013) on Getting a job in Tech.

There were, however, talks giving more general advice about topics such as studying abroad and about choosing and progressing a career, such as the presentation by Kam Taj (OE 2004–2011) on How to find your ideal career.

Alumni had a chance to catch up with each others at a reception hosted by the School before the event.

The evening also benefited from experts attending from organisations with which the School has strong partnerships, such as the National Citizen Service (whose summer programme is always popular with Year 11 boys), the STEM Ambassadors programme and the RAF.

• For more photos from this event, go to QE Connect.

Former pupils from across the generations came to the annual Old Elizabethans Association Dinner – with a strong turn-out from the ‘ten-year leavers’, the class of 2009-2010.

During an evening marked by much convivial chatter and by lively speeches, the diners also observed a silence in memory of former Headmaster Eamonn Harris, one of the great figures in the School’s recent history, who passed away only a few days before the dinner.

Current Headmaster Neil Enright welcomed Elizabethans of all ages – attendees included Brian Gilbert, returning to the School after a gap of 50 years – while reserving a special, if somewhat piquant, greeting for the ten-year leavers, pointing out that Assistant Head David Ryan had described the group “as his most challenging in all his years in the Sixth Form”!

“I’m not, though, surprised to see a good turnout, as they have actually proved to be one of the more actively engaged alumni cohorts and are doing lots of good work in support of the School. They were, and remain (on this evening’s evidence), a very sociable and enthusiastic group, and it is always a great pleasure to have them here at School events.

“We have a former teacher’s son (Adam Kuo), a governor’s son (Prashant Raval), former governor’s son (Josh Wagner), those who have spoken at school events (Matteo Yoon, Kane Evans, Tommy Peto and Prashant); Alex Goring’s brother is now teaching here, while Kunal Mistry is often in School auditing us (so I had better point out to Kunal that the School hasn’t paid for the wine because that wouldn’t be compliant with clause 1.22 on page 140 of the current Academies Accounts Direction).”

The event in the Main Hall was the first dinner to be hosted by the new President of the Old Elizabethans Association, Eric Houston, who taught at the School from 1976 until he retired, as Second Master, in 2010. Mr Houston is both a Governor and a Foundation Trustee of the School.

Another change this year was the reading at the dinner of the Queen Elizabeth’s School Prayer before grace was said.

In his speech, Mr Enright paid fulsome tribute to Mr Harris (HM 1984–1999): “Few can have had such a profound, transformational and lasting impact on Queen Elizabeth’s as Eamonn Harris, without whom we, quite simply, may well not be sitting here this evening.

“His bold decision-making, in making the School independent of the local education authority and then restoring academic selection, and the high expectations he had for all in the School community are the bedrocks of our present pre-eminence.

“We all owe him a debt of great respect and gratitude.”

Mr Enright reported on significant developments during the year, including “the exciting news that we have secured £2.2m of government funding…for our new Music School”.

To prepare the site, the Mayes Building was demolished during the summer. This facility was named in honour of Harry ‘Curly’ Mayes who “spent a full 60 years (from 1902 to 1962) as butler, porter, steward and then caretaker”.

Alluding both to Mr Harris and to Mr Mayes, the Headmaster said: “The present fortunes of the School have been built upon the foundations of the great service given by so many.”

He reported on the start of a project to digitise QE’s archives, beginning with photographs.

And, he said, with the School’s 450th anniversary in 2023 approaching, his predecessor as Headmaster, Dr John Marincowitz (1999–2011), was well on the way to completing his book on the School’s history.

“Recording and giving access to the School’s history is important so that the contributions of people such as Eamonn and Curly Mayes are remembered and so that generations of Elizabethans to come are able to learn about their place in the long and fascinating narrative.”

Mr Enright concluded his speech with a report on QE Connect, the School’s recently launched online community for alumni, which has gained more than 450 members in the space of just a few weeks.

“Whilst we want to help OEs connect to the past, we also have QE Connect to help enable connections in the present and the future,” he said.

• For more photos from this event, go to QE Connect.

Akash Gandhi, who is now working as a Junior Doctor, urged current boys not to forget the values and ethos of QE when he returned as guest speaker to this year’s Junior Awards. 

Akash (2005-2012) threw himself into life as a pupil, playing cricket, getting involved in debating, helping younger boys through peer mentoring, supporting the Sai School Appeal and serving as a Senior Lieutenant, then one of the leading positions within the prefect team.  

On leaving, he went up to Queens’ College, Cambridge, to read Medicine, taking a first-class degree with prize & honours. From there, he went to University College London, for his clinical training, again excelling in his studies. Akash is now a Junior Doctor in Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow, but carves out time every year to support QE’s aspiring Sixth Form medics with their UCAT (University Clinical Aptitude Test) preparations.     

In his speech to the assembled audience of younger boys, parents, staff and VIP guests Akash recalled the message instilled in him by his father: “It is not about what you do, but who you become by what you do.” It is, he said, more important to be concerned about what will be said in your eulogy than what is written in your CV. 

And Akash had three specific areas of advice. The first was to find and follow your passions. “During my time at QE, my passions were my culture, cricket, charity work and football. And so, at university I found myself as the Vice-President of Cambridge University’s India Society. I also captained my college’s cricket team all the way to the final of the cup tournament – despite only ever representing QE’s C team.” 

The second area was to find your mentors and to remember to thank them. “You are not alone, and you’d be a fool not to seek advice from those around you, especially in an establishment like this one. 

“Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, embrace the power of true friendships – trust me on this one,” Akash told the boys. “From my experience, boys of this School look out for each other long after they have stopped sporting its badge. Joining Stapylton House with Mr [Mark] Peplow at the helm, little did I realise the everlasting friendships that I would go on to make. With some of them, I have travelled across central America, Asia and Australia. With others, I have worked together to help provide treatment for patients attending emergency departments across London. 

“I can safely say that I am still surrounded by the values, ethos and ethic that I felt whilst studying at QE. I suppose that’s easy to say when I got to work last Friday to find that four out of the five doctors on my team were also QE boys. And as for the fifth? She’s a proud mother of a son who currently goes to QE! 

“Congratulations on your achievements, keep working hard, and the best of luck for the future,” Akash concluded.