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Up for debate: sixth-formers narrowly defeat alumni over climate change

Victory went to the School in this year’s Dinner Debate – the Elizabethan Union’s historic showpiece event.

Combining formal elements with a relaxed atmosphere and plenty of high-calibre debating, the 57th Annual Elizabethan Union Debate saw Year 13 gather in good spirits, enjoying the opportunity to socialise in a different context away from their normal day-to-day routine.

Year 13’s Anish Kumar and Shubh Rathod proposed the motion, This House believes governments are more responsible for climate change than citizens. They were opposed by Old Elizabethans Siddhant Kansal and Mark Markov (both 2015–2022).

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “The Dinner Debate is an event that intentionally bridges the gap from school to university. It blends the formality of black-tie dress, toasts and a traditional Extended Mace debating format with a relaxed atmosphere where the focus is primarily on enjoyment.”

The Elizabethan Union, QE’s debating society, is currently thriving, with debaters enjoying considerable success.

Proposing the toast to the Union, Siddhant Kansal (who was School Captain in 2021) reflected on his time at QE. Regaling his audience with a few anecdotes from his own Sixth Form experience, he also highlighted all the opportunities that were on offer within and beyond the classroom. Whilst QE can occasionally push you hard, it is all worth it and a time you will look back on fondly with great memories, he told the sixth-formers. Siddhant added that QE really does prepare you well for life at university, thanking staff for both pushing him and supporting him.

The debate itself was wide-ranging and packed with content. It was ultimately a victory for the proposition, but by a relatively narrow margin (45% to 37%, with 18% abstaining).

For the School, Anish and Shubh argued that governments have much greater ability to tackle climate change than citizens and should take responsibility for doing so. The role of governments is to protect their citizens, and they are failing in that task if they do not take more significant action. They stressed the importance of government regulation, and gave examples of how quickly action can be taken when there is determination to do so.

The opposition argued that the ability of governments is actually more limited and that big multi-national companies frequently have more influence and impact (and often more wealth). They spoke, therefore, about the power citizens have as consumers in a globalised, largely capitalist, world. Individuals can make choices about what they buy and from where. Mark stated that this power extended to what people eat: he stressed the significant impact of meat-eating on global emissions. The collective impact from these decisions could be profound. The alumni pair also highlighted the power of electorates to put into office people who care about the environment, and said that democratic participation is therefore crucial. They emphasised that, importantly, people do have agency – including everyone who had gathered in the Main School Hall for the debate.

However, the proposition pair noted that much of the world – including many of the largest polluters and contributors to climate change – is not governed democratically. People in those countries have no, or limited, choice in terms of the shape of their government. They argued that it is these governments, rather than their citizens, that have the wrong priorities and are choosing to promote projects and policies that worsen rather than lessen climate change, such as mega-building projects in the Middle East. There was discussion of the US Presidential Election and its potential consequences for climate action, and of the USA’s commitment to the Paris Climate accord.

The floor debate was finely balanced.

  • Click on the thumbnails below to view the photos.
After celebrating season’s rugby successes, School now looks forward to the QE Sevens

As the School’s U14 and U16 rugby squads prepare to welcome teams from around the country to the 48th annual QE Sevens tournament, their U15 counterparts are reflecting on a strong national competition run.

Another recent highlight was the first-ever QE Rugby Dinner, which saw top players from all year groups come together to celebrate their love of the game.

The QE Sevens, held this year on Sunday 10th March, is one of the country’s biggest school sevens tournaments. It has cup and plate competitions for both U16 and U14 age groups. QE’s own players recently got some practice in at warm-up sevens tournaments at Haberdashers’ and London Oratory schools.

Head of Rugby James Clarke said: “We are busy putting in place the final preparations for the big day. QE Sevens provides invaluable opportunities for our rising players to test themselves against strong opposition. It’s an event at which QE families, alumni and staff can welcome old friends and make new ones.

“Most of all, it’s a great day out at the School – an opportunity to cheer on the home teams and to watch highly competitive, fast-moving rugby in a convivial atmosphere. The action starts at 11:00am. It’s free, and spectators are welcome just to turn up on the day: we look forward, as usual, to seeing many supporters on the touchline!”

The U15s stormed through three rounds of the National Bowl to reach a fifth-round home game against Emanuel School in Battersea. With no first round played, they had kicked off their campaign by securing a convincing 36-7 win in October against Hampstead’s University College School.

They then dispatched both Parmiter’s School, from Garston – whom they defeated 15-12 in round 3 – and Debden Park High School, from Loughton in Essex – against whom the winning margin was greater, with the final score at 25-14.

In their encounter with Emanuel School, they led throughout, amassing a 14-3 lead in the second half. However, after a strong fightback by the visitors, they saw victory snatched from their grasp by an Emanuel try in the last play of the match.

“It was a truly painful defeat,” said Mr Clarke. “Had the boys managed to hold on and see out the match, they would only have been two games from the final at Twickenham. But they should be congratulated on playing some fantastic rugby, both in this game and throughout their run.”

There was some consolation for several of the U15 backline when they found themselves named in the QE Team of the Year, which was announced at the inaugural Rugby Dinner in the Shearly Hall.

There were also prizes for boys of all ages in the Most Improved Player, Players’ Player, and Player of the Season categories.

Inspirational speeches came in the form of videos from current South African captain Siya Kolisi and London’s Maggie Alphonsi MBE, former flanker for Saracens and England.

Also speaking on video was guest speaker Desh Ganeshamoorthy (OE 2014–2021), a former First XV player, who fondly recalled his own QE rugby memories: “I think I ended up playing every position but fly half and scrum half…it was so much fun.”

 

Smashed it! QE shatters previous record, with 62 Oxbridge offers

Queen Elizabeth’s School has set a new all-time record for the number of places offered by Oxford and Cambridge universities, with the 2024 figure of 62 offers easily surpassing the previous school record of 47, set only last year.

There were record numbers of offers from both universities – 46 from Cambridge and 16 from Oxford – with just over one in three boys in Year 13 receiving an Oxbridge offer.

The offers cover a wide range of disciplines – from Law and Medicine to History and Asian & Middle Eastern Studies – and come from 33 colleges.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This is brilliant news! It’s a huge jump up from last year’s figure of 47, which itself comfortably exceeded our previous record of 40.

“These offers are testament to the academic accomplishment and sustained application of these students, both in public examinations and in their university admissions tests.

“They also demonstrate that these candidates were able to a make a convincing case at interview, where they were invariably up against very stiff competition. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many Old Elizabethans and other friends of the School who conducted mock interviews with our boys in the autumn.

“This record is a very auspicious start to our new QE Futures programme, which seeks to further refine and enhance university admissions support and preparation, building on much excellent work embedded here over recent years.”

The highest number of offers came from the following colleges:

  • Queens’, Cambridge – five
  • St Catharine’s, Cambridge – five
  • Trinity, Cambridge – four

There were: 18 offers for Medicine: eight for Economics, or Economics and Management; eight for Engineering; seven for Mathematics, as well as smaller numbers for other subjects, including famous courses such as Cambridge’s Natural Sciences and Oxford’s PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics).

Digging down into the statistics reveals a steady improvement in QE’s offer-to-application and offer-to-interview ratios over the past five years. This year, 90% of Oxford and Cambridge applicants were called for interview and 49% of applicants offered a place.

Assistant Head (Pupil Destinations) James Kane, who heads QE Futures, said: “To have reached a point this year where very nearly half our Oxford and Cambridge applicants have received an offer demonstrates how strong those ratios have become.

“We are confident that these students will make a positive impact on the life of their respective colleges and universities. Of course, receiving an offer is not the end of the process: the hard work continues as these boys strive to meet the conditions of their offers.

“There has been an encouraging picture more broadly, with other students securing a range of offers from other leading institutions: 344 offers so far across 119 courses at 32 different universities.

“As ever, we are mindful that there are some strong and credible candidates disappointed at not receiving the offers for which they had hoped.”

 

Science department trialling new education app developed by QE alumni that harnesses the power of AI

Two Old Elizabethan medics are working with the School to trial an innovative education app that uses AI to support both pupils and their teachers.

QE contemporaries Kavi Samra and Paul Jung (both 2008–2015) have developed Medly AI to help pupils from backgrounds like theirs who may not have access to all the educational resources available to others.

They only started working on the business in August, yet already it has won funding and been accepted into Microsoft’s start-up programme.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “We are very pleased to be working with Kavi and Paul as they develop this exciting venture that is showing great potential to support our boys, and other young people, with their consolidation and revision.”

After approaching the School about trialling the app with QE pupils, the pair had a meeting with the Headmaster and with Gillian Ridge and Amy Irvine, Heads of Biology and Chemistry respectively, in which they demonstrated the platform and introduced its teacher mode. “This is where teachers are able to set questions (from a large database, or their own custom questions) to their respective classes for homework, or in a test format,” said Kavi.

Medley AI can then:

  • Understand the questions
  • Work out how they fit into the curriculum of the subject
  • Assign them to a specification point
  • Mark the students’ answers.

“From here, the teacher can get in-depth statistical insights into each student’s weak topics, topic by topic and class by class. This then enables them to customise their classroom teaching according to class-wide weak topics and, of course, saves an incredible amount of time in terms of marking student work.

“Both Dr Irvine and Dr Ridge seemed quite impressed and were eager to start using Medly as a resource to save time and understand where their students don’t perform well.”

‘Onboarding’ for the Year 11 group took place before Christmas, and Paul and Kavi will now be working with the Science department. “This will involve teachers setting homework on the platform and providing feedback on what they’d like to see in our teacher mode to help us improve the platform,” said Kavi. “The students will, of course, have access to our base platform, too, in case they wish to do additional learning or practise questions or exams.”

“We’ve always wanted to try to democratise education,” says Kavi. “Medly AI was born from the vision of making quality education accessible and personalised through the power of AI. Both Paul and I noticed throughout our education how people often had advantages from their socio-economic background in terms of educational resources (e.g personal tuition): both of us come from backgrounds that didn’t allow us access to these resources.

“Recognising the gaps in traditional educational systems due to work pressures on teachers and staffing issues, we saw the potential of AI to fill these gaps and therefore conceptualised a platform that could act as a personal tutor, examiner, and classroom assistant, all integrated into one user-friendly interface.”

Paul is responsible for writing code and working on the technical side of the project, while Kavi takes on operations.

After just two months of development, Microsoft admitted Medly AI to its programme, providing Kavi and Paul with mentoring from a business development manager and meeting the costs of the platform up to £150,000. A month later, the project was also accepted into UCL’s Hatchery start-up accelerator, enabling its professional fees for legal, IP and accounting costs to be funded.

Both Paul and Kavi have deep connections with UCL. Paul holds a PhD in Neuropsychiatry from the university, and has an extensive background in coding and teaching. He included AI in his research, on which he has published and given international presentations. He has returned to his medical degree at UCL and is in his final year, completing his MBBS in August.

Kavi, who currently works as a doctor in anaesthetics, completed his medical degree at UCL in 2021 and is a clinical teacher within its medical school: his approaches to using teaching theory in a digital age earned him an Associate Fellowship of Higher Education Award from UCL and he is also one of the youngest recipients of an honorary fellow contract at UCL.

 

Farewell to a fantastic 450th anniversary year!

Boys from Years 7 & 8 lined up in front of the School to bid a colourful goodbye to Queen Elizabeth’s School’s 450th anniversary year.

With sixth-formers helping to ensure all looked good, and with a drone filming overhead, the junior boys filed on to Stapylton Field in front of Main Building to spell out #QE450. Click here to see the drone footage showing how it was done!

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It has been a tremendous year, so we wanted to find a way to mark its conclusion which was both fun and which created an impressive spectacle involving a large number of boys. My thanks go to our Head of Technology, Michael Noonan, and his Year 12 Technology class for lining up the participants so accurately.

“More generally, I would like to thank the countless people – boys, staff, alumni, parents, Governors and other friends of the School – who have contributed in so many ways to making our anniversary year such a resounding success. We look back with gratitude on a fantastic 2023, and look forward with great anticipation to all that 2024 will bring.”

The Year 7 & 8 boys wore sports strip in their House colours for the shoot:

  • Broughton in red for the hash tag (#)
  • Harrisons’ in brown for Q
  • Leicester in yellow for E
  • Pearce in purple for 4
  • Stapylton in blue for 5
  • Underne in green for 0.

The anniversary celebrations were heralded close to the end of the 2022 Autumn Term with a royal visit from HRH The Duke of Gloucester.

Major events during the year itself began with the launch of a new authoritative history of the School, Queen Elizabeth’s School: 1573–2023, written by former Headmaster Dr John Marincowitz (1999–2011).

On 24th March, 450 years to the day since Queen Elizabeth I signed the Royal Charter to establish QE, the whole School gathered for a thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey.

Founder’s Day on the third Saturday in June was heavily anniversary-themed, with events including the planting of a time capsule intended for exhumation on the School’s 500th anniversary in 2073.

The Old Elizabethans Annual Reunion Dinner this year had a special emphasis on the anniversary, including the opportunity for alumni to see items from the QE Collections archive.

The Chamber Choir were recorded performing And Be it Known, the anniversary anthem commissioned by the School from international composer Howard Goodall for the service in Westminster Abbey, where it was premiered. The recording was used as the soundtrack for a special anniversary video.

The traditional Service of Nine Lessons and Carols in Chipping Barnet parish church, which included the first-ever congregational rendering of And Be It Known.

And those are just some of the highlights: throughout the year, the anniversary was celebrated through a series of special events and activities, including: the 56th Annual Elizabethan Union Dinner Debate; competitions; festivals in areas as diverse as the Sciences, Economics & rugby; and the planting of trees in Heartwood Forest, as well as hundreds of bulbs around the QE site.

Out now! QE’s special anniversary video, offering a “great memento of a fabulous year”

With just a few days left until the end of Queen Elizabeth’s School’s 450th anniversary year, a special film published today provides an exciting whistlestop tour of the highlights of 2023.

Professionally produced, the film is set to the soundtrack of QE’s Chamber Choir singing And Be It Known – the anniversary anthem commissioned by the School from international composer Howard Goodall, which was recorded in a special session last month.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “I invite everyone to take a look at this video, which captures in just a few short minutes so much of what has made our anniversary celebrations so memorable, starting with the visit of HRH The Duke of Gloucester this time last year and including major events involving the whole School, such as our Westminster Abbey thanksgiving service in March and Founder’s Day in June.

“It’s a great watch, and with a super musical soundtrack: as we wrap up the celebrations and start to think about our exciting plans for 2024, I hope everyone will take a few moments to enjoy this memento and reflect on our fabulous year.”

The Chamber Choir was conducted by Director of Music Ruth Partington, with Music teachers Rebecca German and Jas Hutchinson-Bazely also closely involved in the recording session in The Friends’ Recital Hall. Miss German sang and Mr Hutchinson-Bazely played the School’s new electric organ.

Sound-recording was managed and produced by Year 13’s Indrajit Datta, with fellow pupil Abhinav Sandeep, of Year 10, operating the venue’s in-built camera to record the wide angles, alongside fellow Year 10 pupil Benjamin Newton. Indrajit, who is hoping to forge a career in this industry, used ten microphones, strategically placed, to record the different instruments and choir sections, including a feed directly from the organ.

The filming of the session was conducted by professional cameraman Andrew Litt, with video production by Dashing Duck. Stills photography is courtesy of Eleanor Bentall and Westminster Abbey.

The anthem was premiered at Westminster Abbey on 24th March, 450 years to the day since Queen Elizabeth I granted the charter for the establishment of the School. It was performed again on Founder’s Day, and the congregation will sing it at the end of the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols in Chipping Barnet Parish Church on Wednesday this week, with all boys in Year 7 learning it in advance so they can contribute.

The video covers many of the more formal events of the year, but there have been numerous other anniversary-related events, from subject festivals, tree and bulb plantings, lecture assemblies, competitions, and even the unique experience of QE hosting a TV film crew for a food programme popular in Korea!


Anthem recording session performers

Conductor
Miss Ruth Partington, Director of Music

Chamber Choir
Year 7
Krish Bhatia

Year 8
Aarush Marti
Akein Athukoralage
Eshaan Anil
Sree Harsha Gullapali
Anirudh Premkumar
Aadi Chauhan
Mithun Madhu
Galinghan Balamurugan

Year 9
Adithya Ananthakrishnan
Parth Jain
Jamie Lam
Aayush Shukla
Akshay Shah
Kiran Wright
Joseph Donovan
Krishiv Karelia
Aatheethya Jeyanth
Arjun Anand
Nikhil Francine
Gyan Nadhavajhala
Krishna Gajendra
Kelvin Chen

Year 10
Keeyan Shah
Rishi Watsalya
Siddhant Pochalwar
Nafis Meah
Noah Morley

Year 11
Colin Copcea
Saahil Shah
Ram Chockalingam
William Joanes
Johnny Yassa
Simi Bloom
Adam Liang
Keon Robert

Year 12
Akshat Bajaj
Harrison Lee
Joel Swedensky
Nikhil Mark
Jason Tao

Year 13
Tharun Dhamodhran
Arjun Patel
Sena Lai-Fujiwara

Old Elizabethans
Mr George Raynor (2014–2021)
Mr Bhunit Santhiramoulesan (2016–2023)

Staff
Miss Rebecca German, Music teacher

Instrumentalists
Trumpets
Mr Peter Yarde Martin (OE 2002–2007)
Joel Swedensky, Year 12

Horn
Mr Eddie Morgan, QE peripatetic Music teacher

Trombones
Mr William Barnes McCallum
Mr Tom Scaife

Tuba
Mr Stuart Beard

Timpani
Mr Neil Rowland, QE peripatetic Music teacher

Organ
Mr Jas Hutchinson-Bazely, QE Music teacher