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The School’s top chess players of all ages are looking forward to doing battle in the new term in the regional finals of the English Schools’ Chess Championships, after emerging triumphant from a qualifier. 

QE’s A team, comprising players from the senior years, successfully took on teams from Aylesbury Grammar School, the Lycée Internationale de Londres, University College School, and from the hosts, Harrow, to secure first place in the regional qualifier.  

The younger B team came fifth, with both the teams successfully going through to the regional knockout stages. 

The successes capped a term in which no fewer than 168 boys took part in in-School tournaments for Years 9, 10 & 11. 

Teacher in charge of chess Geoff Roberts said: “My congratulations go to our A team, who played superbly at Harrow, winning four matches, and to the B team, who also put in a very creditable performance, winning two and drawing one of their four matches.    

“There were particularly strong performances from the A team’s Daiwik Solanki and B team’s Hubert Bates, who both won three of their matches and drew the remaining one. Well done, too, to Nishchal Thatte, Joshua John, Jason Tao, Rithwik Gururaj, Callistus Bhattachrya and Karthik Kalairasan, who also notched up three wins apiece.” 

Eighteen teams took part in the regional qualifier. 

In QE’s own tournaments, Rithwik, of Underne House, and Nishchal, of Leicester, were joint winners of the Year 11 tournament.

Rohan Katkar won the Year 10 tournament and Yue Song secured first place in the Year 8 event. 

Tournaments for Years 7 & 9 will be played in the first half of the Spring Term.   

The School A and B teams were as follows:   

A team 

Joshua John, Year 13
Andreas Angelopoulos, Year 13
Jason Tao, Year 13
Daiwik Solanki, Year 12
Rithwik Gururaj, Year 11
Nishchal Thatte, Year 11 

B team 

Karthik Kalaiarasan, Year 12 
Callistus Bhattacharya, Year 10
Aayush Dewangan, Year 9
Bharat Jayakumar, Year 9
Elliot O’Donnell, Year 9
Hubert Bates, Year 7 

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.” 

 

 

Broughton just pipped last year’s winner, Stapylton, to become QE’s champion House, with 1,592 points, against Stapylton’s 1,589.

Headmaster Neil Enright presented the Eric Shearly House Cup to Broughton’s leaders as the climax to the traditional end-of-year assembly.

“My congratulations go to House Captain Robin Bickers, Deputy House Captain Zeyuan Wu, and to all the members of Broughton House,” he said. “As the points totals attest, this was a closely fought contest. Points are amassed from many different areas of School life, and Broughton’s achievement thus demonstrates considerable commitment, as well as consistency across a broad range of endeavour.”

Underne came third in this year’s competition.

The cup is awarded based on points that are awarded to QE’s six Houses throughout the academic year. They include points gained through a large number of House competitions. Points are also gained according to the total number of merits and good notes earned across the year groups.

Broughton has the distinction of being the only House named after an Old Elizabethan. William Grant Broughton was educated at QE in the late 18th century and was appointed Archdeacon of New South Wales in 1828, having been noticed and assisted by the Duke of Wellington. He went on to become the first (and only) Bishop of Australia of the Church of England.

The trophy Broughton received, the Eric Shearly Cup, is named after Eric Shearly (1920–2005), who dedicated 76 years of his life to QE, where he was both a pupil and a teacher. He was an enthusiastic advocate of extra-curricular activities, having himself been a highly successful QE athletics captain in the late 1930s.

The special assembly was introduced by Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter, who leads the QE Flourish extra-curricular programme.

He told the boys that QE Flourish this year included no fewer than 200 trips, 33 of them residential. Every single member of QE’s teaching staff took part in at least one School trip. Six hundred and fifty boys had seen a live show. In total, the programme had delivered 13,508 experiences to individual pupils, Mr Bonham-Carter said.

The assembly celebrated many of the year’s achievements and House competitions. Areas covered included charity work; the environment (including autumn tree-planting and bulb-planting as part of the 2023 450th anniversary celebrations); EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion); QE Together (the pupil-led community partnership with Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School); debating; Music; chess; drama; and sport.

The boys were told that £500 was raised for the Noah’s Ark Hospice and another £500 for overseas charitable work, split between the School’s long-running Sai School Appeal supporting a rural school in Kerala, India, and Teach Sri Lanka, which supports the education of children from all communities and all backgrounds in that nation.

The assembly also celebrated a busy year for the School’s musicians, who have been involved in eight concerts, QE’s May the fourth be almost with you Music festival, trips, charity performances, and this month’s tour to Vienna, as well as providing musical support for several formal School occasions.

With chess thriving at QE, especially in the lower years, there was the announcement of 20 boys winning junior colours, seven winning intermediate and seven winning senior, as well as a large number of commendations.

In sport, 23 teams represented the School this year. There were more than 119 fixtures, with a total of 407 different boys playing for QE.

 

Stapylton House beat rivals Broughton at Sports Day 2024 in the closest contest for years.

The blues of Stapylton emerged victorious by the narrowest of margins – a single point – thus bringing to an end the multi-year Sports Day dominance of red rivals Broughton.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “With Stapylton winning by 587 points to Broughton’s 586, the competition could hardly have been any more exciting! Well done to all the hundreds of boys who competed and to our winners.

“My thanks go to the PE & Games department for successfully putting on a one-day festival of physical activity that was a great deal of fun.”

Sports Day covered a wide range of disciplines, including individual track and field athletics events, rowing, triathlon, badminton, table-tennis, Eton Fives, tug-of-war and volleyball.

It involved every pupil from Year 7 through to Year 10. Large numbers of staff were on hand to make sure everything ran smoothly, with the Year 12 Sports Leaders also playing an important role in the administration.

The event was the swansong of Head of Rugby James Clarke, who leaves the School this summer after working in the department for a dozen years. As an Old Elizabethan (1999-2004), if he felt some disappointment that his own House, Broughton, missed out, there was at least consolation in the fact that he anchored the staff team to victory in the traditional finale to Sports Day – the QE Mile, a 16 x 100m relay.

Pictured, top, is Year 10’s Faaiz Adil, one of the School’s leading young sportsmen, quite literally throwing himself into his race.

• Click on the thumbnails to view the images.

 

Pupils from across the first three years of Queen Elizabeth’s School had their achievements recognised and lauded at the 2024 Junior Awards.

At an afternoon ceremony held in the Main School Hall, boys gathered with their families and with staff and dignitaries to celebrate.

There were prizes for all the classroom subjects, as well as House prizes, prizes for commitment, and prizes for extra-curricular activities, such as debating & public speaking, and chess. Music prizewinners from Years 7, 8 and 9 punctuated the programme with a series of musical interludes. A vote of thanks was given by the Year 7 debating & public speaking prizewinner, Aaron Singh.

Headmaster Neil Enright spoke about how the prizewinners are seen by others; guest of honour Asif Ahmed (OE 1997–2004) about how they see themselves; and the Mayor of Barnet, Councillor Tony Vourou, about how the whole School is seen in the borough: there is, he said, considerable pride in QE and the achievements of its students.

In his introduction to the ceremony, Mr Enright told the boys: “These awards are a signal that you are doing very well indeed and that we see in you qualities that set a positive example for others in the School – so many of whom are also very talented and hard working.”

He spoke about the butterfly effect, which argues that small things can end up having significant impacts, citing the famous story of a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world and a hurricane developing in another.

He urged the boys to small acts of kindness – “a quiet, unshowy altruism” – to benefit those around them, whether at School or elsewhere.

“With your abilities, many of you may go on to make the discoveries, find the cures, engineer the projects, secure the investments of the future. There should be no ceiling to your aspirations. But, with certainty, everyone here and in our Elizabethan community can do the little things in daily life so that things are better for others, or at least,” he added, quoting from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, “that things are ‘not so ill as they might have otherwise been’.”

Guest of honour Asif leads the accounting and advisory team at major accountancy firm Cooper Parry which focuses on venture capital-backed founders of companies. He is also the author of best-selling book The Finance Playbook for Entrepreneurs. An accomplished sportsman, he is now part of the Board at Middlesex County Cricket Club.

In his speech, he included many biographical elements from his Schooldays, mentioning being made form captain in Year 7, playing cricket for Middlesex and rugby for Hertfordshire, being appointed a Lieutenant, and achieving good grades.

“At all those milestones, including being appointed Lieutenant, I never shook the feeling of looking around me and thinking: ‘When will you get found out, you absolute fraud?’” he said.

After leaving School, while still training for his professional qualifications with large accountancy firm PwC, his father was diagnosed with a terminal illness. “I unexpectedly found myself in a position at 22 years old, looking after his very small accounting firm. There I was, no clue in the world, with nothing and really no-one to rely upon. The imposter syndrome kicked in again.”

Over time, however, Asif succeeded in building up the business, wrote his best-selling book, and was approached by a much larger firm with an offer to buy his company. “Today, I am a Partner of that firm and I lead the largest team and portfolio of high-growth technology businesses in the country, working with the best entrepreneurs in this land.”

He told the boys all this, because, he said: “I’ve come to realise that imposter syndrome is the world’s way of telling you that other people see something in you that you yourself can’t see…yet. When you are rewarded, you absolutely must savour it, hold it tightly and mark it out as one step closer to fulfilling your destiny.”

The afternoon’s music was a varied selection – including Stravinsky, Gershwin and Mozart alongside a piece by the rather less well-known Polish composer, Szymanowski.

Because of the inclement weather, the reception, normally held on Stapylton Field, took place this year in the Mayes Atrium.

• Click on the thumbnails below to view the images at full size.

QE’s Founder’s Day 2024 brought a mix of tradition, entertainment, international food and sheer fun to Queen’s Road, with hundreds turning out for the afternoon fete.

Before that, staff and pupils at the Parish Church enjoyed an address from leading young barrister and Old Elizabethan Sam Goodman (2002–2009) .

Then it was back to the School for the traditional Roll Call and Reading of the School Chronicle in front of the Main Building, before QE’s massed musicians got the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s (FQE) fete off to a rousing start.

The day is a major fundraiser for FQE, who this year were aiming to pay for the audio-visual equipment needed for the School’s new Robert Dudley Studio. The Elizabethan community did not disappoint, smashing the £25,000 target: the current total stands at £34,590.75 – and rising! It is not too late to give: just go to the dedicated JustGiving page.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My thanks go to everyone involved for all their support in delivering a wonderful day.

“The Service of Thanksgiving was magnificent, with great music and – a new tradition for us – the recitation of the pledges written for the 450th anniversary service at Westminster Abbey last year. These remind us of the role we each play within our wider School community.

“Our guest speaker, Sam Goodman, delivered an engaging and entertaining address at the service in which he covered his career as a barrister, his time at QE, and even fitted in some practical advice for the Year 7 boys there starting out on their journey.

“There was a lovely family atmosphere on Stapylton Field throughout the afternoon fete, where there was something for everyone to enjoy. It was a tremendous collective community effort: FQE, and the parents and friends of the School who volunteer to help out, are the backbone of the fete.

“It was good to see plenty of alumni over the course of the afternoon, some with family, some with friends – all very welcome indeed.”

“We were, of course, also gratified that, contrary to expectations, the weather mostly co-operated! I’m afraid those setting up the stalls were soaked by a torrential downpour at noon, but it was dry and brightening by the time the church service ended, which meant the Roll Call went ahead outside, as planned.”

The fete remained dry until a light shower coincided with the published end time of 4.30pm.

In his address, Sam Goodman explained the role of a barrister and the sorts of cases he works on. He has chosen areas of law that interest him, such as crypto assets, environmental cases and AI. The latter is, he said, about to transform our lives, but there remain many ethical issues around bias in programming and how AI is trained to make very serious decisions. He cited the example of a driverless vehicle deciding who to hit and who to avoid in an impending collision.

He can choose to work on some cases on a pro bono basis, for example representing an environmental charity against Shell last year. But he noted that the ‘cab rank’ system meant that barristers had to take the next case in line, whatever they might think of the client, it being a central pillar of the justice system that everyone is entitled to representation.

Looking back on his time at QE, he reflected on a “brilliant” education. He said that on reaching university, he realised that he had had a better education than others whose parents may have been spending £50k a year in school fees. He recalled with fondness some of his teachers: Liam Hargadon, for Politics; David Ryan, now Deputy Head (Pastoral), for English; Anne Macdonald, now Deputy Head (Academic), for Geography; and Neil Enright (“I’m not sure whatever became of him!”).

Sam urged the young people in the congregation to take every opportunity they were afforded to get better at things. He said he knew he wanted to be a barrister from an early age, but did not like public speaking and was even reluctant to speak up in class. To build his confidence, he therefore took the LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art) public-speaking examinations and then got involved in debating at QE.

His other robust advice and cautionary words for the boys included:

• “Don’t give up too early on skills you don’t think you’ll need.” In his case, he had had no interest in carrying on with Mathematics, but now finds himself dealing with complex financial information daily, for which this would have been helpful.
• “Don’t assume you will be brilliant at something just because you are good at other things. You need to work at everything.”
• “Embrace exams,” since they are such a good preparation for the future.

Sam thanked his mum, who was in attendance, and stressed to the boys that they are where they are in part due to the great support they have had from families who are interested and want the best for them.

Beginning the programme of entertainment on the fete stage were musical performances from the School Choir, massed winds and strings, and then the electric guitar ensemble. The guitarists made the most of the sound system supplied by Old Elizabethan Chris Newton and School Stage!

Other stage performances during the afternoon included demonstrations of yoga, gymnastics, traditional Indian classical dance, Bollywood dance and traditional Chinese Gu Zheng, as well as Night of Ulanbaatar, a popular Mongolian folk song.

The friendly competition between the Indian and Sri Lankan food tents of previous years continued, and both the 2024 School Captain, Chanakya Seetharam, and members of staff took their turns in the ‘stocks’ (or, more accurately, the pillory).

There were stalls to suit all interests, from a coconut shy to a lucky dip, with items on sale ranging from jewellery to plants, books and toys.

Creativity was to the fore, with cakes aplenty and even some homemade and edible School ties on sale in the refreshments tent!

Away from the field, two visual attractions in Main Building proved popular – an art project and 450 in Photos, a new photographic display charting the highlights of last year’s 450th anniversary celebrations.

In addition to the proceeds from the stalls, money was raised through selling advertising space in the 44-page fete programme and from the House Music Day competition, held on the eve of Founder’s Day itself.

Prefects and volunteers stayed on to clear everything away after the fete. “The Year 12 prefect team, led by the School Captain, and the two Senior Vice-Captains, Saim Khan and Rohan Kumar, worked diligently and with great energy and humour to support the running of the day. It really could not be done without them, or the wonderful FQE volunteers, led by Fete Sub-Committee Chair Rekha Essex,” the Headmaster concluded.

• Click on the thumbnails below to view the gallery of images.