Viewing archives for School performance

Aly Sayani has won a sought-after scholarship to the University of Toronto, one of only 37 applicants from around the world to taste this success.

The coveted Lester B Pearson International Scholarship will cover Aly’s tuition, accommodation, materials and living expenses for the four years in which he reads Social Sciences at the Mississauga campus.

The letter he received offering him the scholarship also specified that in addition to the wide range of academic and co-curricular opportunities the university has to offer, “Pearson Scholars become part of a unique cohort, with access to specially enriched programming and select opportunities.”

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “We are naturally delighted for Aly on his successful application for this prestigious scholarship. I am always pleased to see our boys exploring overseas opportunities at top universities, and we believe he is the first Elizabethan to take up an undergraduate place in Canada.

“This has been a remarkable year in more ways than one: quite apart from the challenges posed by Covid-19, we have 40 boys with Oxbridge offers – a School record – and many others who will take up places on prestigious courses at Russell Group universities.”

The Lester B Pearson scholarship programme is intended to recognise students who demonstrate exceptional academic achievement and creativity and who are acknowledged as leaders within their schools.

Aly, of Year 13, says: “I am immensely grateful and honoured to be a recipient of this scholarship. I was born in Karachi and raised in cosmopolitan London; I look forward to continuing to experience a wide range of beautiful and vibrant cultures, traditions and communities in the multicultural city of Toronto. I hope to learn how I can tackle problems such as poverty, inequality and climate change through my time at U of T.”

On its website, the University of Toronto says: “A special emphasis is placed on the impact the student has had on the life of their school and community, and their future potential to contribute positively to the global community.”

Only overseas students can apply for the scholarship, which is named after a former Prime Minister of Canada who in 1957 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to resolve the Suez Crisis.

Students’ applications must be supported with a strong recommendation from their school and the university will only allow one applicant from any school.

In writing a letter to support Aly’s application, QE Assistant Headteacher and Head of Year 13, Michael Feven highlighted the many ways in which Aly met and even surpassed the criteria. He passed nine out of his ten GCSEs with the highest possible grade and also received the top grade for Mathematics, History, Economics and French at AS Level.

Mr Feven continued: “I cannot recommend Aly highly enough. He is a hard-working, ambitious and scholarly pupil, one who I have complete confidence would be appropriate for a programme such as yours. Academically, he ranks among the brightest that the UK has to offer.”

He went on to describe Aly’s activities within School and in his home community, where he supports the Ismaili community, acting as a youth club team member and chairman. “Additional evidence of his excellent community contribution can be demonstrated in his role as a volunteer at Hillingdon Refugee Support Group. Here, Aly has helped to lead and organise life skills sessions for refugees fleeing conflict to help them settle into new lives in the UK.”

Aly was one of the School’s prefects in 2019 and played his part in monitoring younger boys at breaks and events. “His willingness to give up much of his free time over the year to support the smooth running of the School’s celebrations, open evenings and charity events is symptomatic of his engaged community spirit,” concluded Mr Feven.

Forty boys have been offered places at Oxford or Cambridge this year – a new record high for Queen Elizabeth’s School.

The figure surpasses the previous QE record of 37 set in 2008 and repeated in 2014. Twenty-seven of this year’s 40 offers are for places at Cambridge and the remaining 13 are for Oxford.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This is a remarkable achievement, both individually for each of the boys and collectively for the School.”

“It reflects, on the one hand, the hard work and consistent application of these pupils, certainly in their academic studies, but also in the extra-curricular and voluntary pursuits by which they showed themselves to be, in the words of our School mission, ‘confident, able and responsible’ candidates of the calibre sought by our leading universities.

“And, on the other, their success is evidence of the meticulous work undertaken at the School to assist pupils as they move into higher education, much of it delivered through our QE University admissions Support Programme (or USP), which is supported by many Old Elizabethans. This work includes a great deal of focus on UCAS statements, as well as expert preparation for the various Oxbridge admissions tests and interview practice.

“We are a state school like no other; fiercely ambitious in nurturing high levels of aspiration among our pupils and their families, and then in helping them fulfil these aspirations. The fact that a good proportion of our boys are the first in their families to go to university is a compelling example of QE’s success in advancing social mobility.”

The Oxbridge places offered span the arts and the sciences, from Modern Languages to Medicine, and Natural Sciences at Cambridge to Politics, Philosophy & Economics at Oxford. One feature of this year’s offers is that there are a number for degrees in a combination of subjects, such as History & German.

The offers come from a wide range of colleges, from the 13th-century University College Oxford to Cambridge’s Girton, which gained full university college status in 1948.

Mr Enright added: “We do, of course, have many other very able boys – including strong Oxbridge candidates who nevertheless did not receive offers. Whilst they may feel some disappointment now, a large majority of Year 13 are in receipt of offers at other prestigious and highly competitive institutions across the Russell Group and beyond, where I am confident that they will similarly thrive and excel.”

• The photo, top, shows 32 of the 35 boys in Year 13 who have gained Oxbridge offers, together with Mr Enright. The remaining five candidates offered places are from among last year’s leavers.

Queen Elizabeth’s School has been named the State School of the Year for the second consecutive year in the Sunday Times’ Parent Power survey.

QE leads both the London and national rankings in the influential annual table, which is based on GCSE and A-level results.

And the survey revealed that QE is in fact among the uppermost echelon for schools of any stripe, state or private, since only four independent schools surpassed the School’s 2019 figure of 95.7% for the proportion of A-levels passed at A*-B (namely St Paul’s Girls’ School, Godolphin and Latymer School and King’s College School in London, together with Brighton College).

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This is very welcome news and I feel tremendously proud to have the privilege of leading this School. Our position as the leading state school reflects both a substantial amount of hard work on the part of my colleagues and the boys, and our sustained commitment to pursuing the highest levels of achievement across all areas of School life.

“Good examination results, while important for our boys in securing places at the world’s best universities, are by no means our only priority. Through our broad and balanced curriculum, together with our extra-curricular academic enrichment programme, we seek to nurture a genuine spirit of scholarship among our boys.

“In addition, consonant with our mission ‘to produce young men who are confident, able and responsible’, we expect pupils to take advantage of the many other worthwhile activities available to them, whether top-quality music and drama, our wide range of sports, or our popular clubs, such as chess and robotics.”

The Parent Power rankings are determined by the percentage of examination entries gaining A* to B grades at A-level this summer (which is given double weighting) and the percentage of entries awarded A* and A grades, or their numerical equivalents, at GCSE. For QE, the GCSE figure was 90.8%.

Parent Power’s editor, Alistair McCall, wrote: “Despite the rapid advance of several relatively new schools in the capital, age is no barrier to success. Once again, Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet – founded in 1573 – tops both the London and the UK state school rankings. Competition for places at this boys’ grammar is not for the faint-hearted: 2,400 sat the entrance exam last year – a pool that is 50% larger than just five years ago.”

Immediately below QE in the state school table was Wilson’s School in Wallington, with local girls’ school, The Henrietta Barnett School, in third place.

The high position of these and other selective state schools in the rankings has not gone unnoticed among commentators. Professor Alan Smithers, a well-known educationalist from the University of Buckingham, highlighted the widespread national problem of bright children from disadvantaged backgrounds doing well at primary school, but then failing to make progress at secondary level. “Could the reintroduction of grammar schools be the answer to enable bright children to fulfil their potential?” he wrote in the Sunday Times.

Headmaster Neil Enright delivered a speech on QE’s focus on ‘free-thinking scholarship’ to an influential conference of heads from independent schools.

Mr Enright was invited as one of a small number of guest speakers at the Girls’ Schools Association’s Annual Conference for Heads in Bristol.

In his speech during a plenary session entitled Keeping scholarship at the heart of education, he set out QE’s work to cultivate habits of independent learning and academic curiosity.

“We summarise this approach as free-thinking scholarship – a relatively new phrase in the QE lexicon,” he told his audience, who were drawn from some of the country’s most famous girls’ schools.

Mr Enright spoke of the importance of maintaining a focus on free-thinking scholarship within a curriculum that is designed to be intellectually rigorous yet also to be exciting and to embrace worthwhile innovation.

However, he also highlighted QE’s commitment to its academic enrichment programme, through which it offers activities that go beyond the classroom curriculum and the requirements of public examinations.

Mr Enright pointed to the role here of the academic symposia that QE holds with local girls’ schools, including North London Collegiate School (whose Headmistress, Sarah Clark, also spoke in the session and through whom Mr Enright’s invitation had come) and The Henrietta Barnett School. On the day Mr Enright spoke, a group of Year 13 girls from NLCS were visiting QE for a symposium, while a group of Year 11 boys headed in the opposite direction the following day.

While scholarship might be seen as “somewhat of a heritage brand” – gothic libraries, decanters of port and the like – the focus at QE was instead on the fundamental attributes that underpin scholarship: “We must be open to expressions of scholarship which look rather different.”

And Mr Enright cited as a recent example the work of old boy George the Poet (George Mpanga OE 2003–2010), an award-winning podcaster, who opened the coverage of the 2018 Royal Wedding, performed at the opening ceremony of the 2015 Rugby World Cup and has been a regular panellist on BBC’s Question Time. “His work is now undoubtedly a great example of scholarship – a contemporary, urban, forward-looking, free-thinking scholarship,” said Mr Enright.

He also mentioned Anthony Anaxagorou (OE 1994–1999), QE’s poet-in-residence, who was recently shortlisted for the prestigious TS Eliot prize and whose “radical perspective [is] grounded in his experience of race and identity”. Acknowledging that neither Anthony’s nor George’s work found ready recognition at the School when they were pupils, Mr Enright added: “I would like to think that the School would be better placed now to value and support their brands of free-thinking scholarship.”

To inspire and facilitate scholarship in their pupils, schools must identify, attract and then develop staff who have a “deep-rooted interest to continue to explore their [own] interests” and can model “scholastic traits”.

“Our boys expect their teachers to be on top of not just the course material, but the hot topics in their field, the emerging theories and technologies,” he said.

One significant factor in QE’s success in supporting staff had been the work of many departments with the Prince’s Teaching Institute, which, Mr Enright said, had “proved a great way of stretching our subject leaders, giving them the opportunity to collaborate across different schools, learn from best practice and then train others”. Several staff, including Mr Enright himself as well as Assistant Head Sarah Westcott, Head of History & Politics Helen MacGregor and Head of Mathematics Jessica Steer, have current leadership roles within the charity.

Mr Enright set out several other steps the School takes to promote scholarship, all of which, he said aimed at “trying to create and maintain a culture whereby curiosity, ambitious thinking and intellectual risk-taking feels safe”.

Pupils at Queen Elizabeth’s School have topped last year’s record results with a GCSE performance that saw the proportion of examinations awarded levels 8 & 9 – the equivalent of A* – rising to 79%.

Forty-nine boys – well over a quarter of the 180-strong Year 11 – gained A* grades (8s & 9s) across all of their GCSEs. Over 55% of examinations were given the highest grade possible, a level 9. And 13 of the 49 achieved the ultimate clean sweep – all grade 9s.

In total, 55% of QE’s GCSE candidates (99 boys) learned today that they had achieved grades 7-9 (grades A*-A) in all their subjects. A 100% pass rate for the Government-supported English Baccalaureate (EBacc*) further underlines the strength in depth of this year’s GCSE performance at the School.

The GCSE figures follow last week’s very strong A-level results, which saw QE identified in the league table published by The Times as London’s top secondary school across both the private and state sectors, and as the leading state secondary nationally.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This is a lovely day of great celebration at Queen Elizabeth’s School. We made a big leap at the very top end in last year’s GCSE results, so it is most impressive that this year’s cohort have been able to extend that record.

“The introduction of level 9 has been very helpful for our pupils, giving them the opportunity to distinguish themselves by demonstrating just what they can do at the uppermost end of the academic spectrum.

“I congratulate the boys both on their consistent hard work over the past two years and on their diligence in revising for their final examinations. Credit must also go to my colleagues: these results would not have been achieved without their often-inspirational teaching and the meticulous individual support they provide for the boys.”

Individual success stories included that of Aqif Choudhury, who was the top performer across the whole country in his GCSE Economics examination (OCR board).

Among other highlights is the performance of those who opted to take Latin, with 100% of candidates achieving grade 8 or 9 in this subject, which was re-introduced at the School in 2012.

Mr Enright added: “Important though examination results are, they remain only one facet of the rounded education provided at QE today, where we lay great emphasis on service to others and expect boys to participate in our full range of extra-curricular activities, including the performing arts and sport. I am looking forward to these Year 11 boys returning for the Sixth Form next month and to catching up with them on their adventures over the summer, when many have been on work experience placements and taking part in NCS – the Government-backed programme that brings together young people from different backgrounds.”

*The EBacc is achieved by gaining passes at levels 9-4 (equivalent to A*–C) in all of the following: English, Mathematics, History or Geography, Science and a language.

Boys at Queen Elizabeth’s School have consolidated last year’s record-breaking A-level achievements with another emphatic performance at the very highest grade.

In total, 229 A* grades were awarded out of the 506 A-levels taken in Year 13. The proportion gaining this highest-possible grade stands at 45.3%, second only to 2018’s best-ever figure of 46.9%. 86.2% of grades were at A*-A.

The proportion of A*-B grades – a benchmark measure used widely by the country’s leading schools – remained above the 95% threshold, where it has now been for a remarkable 14 consecutive years.

QE pupils also excelled in Year 12 at AS-level: 82.7% of the 606 examinations taken were given grade A (the highest AS grade), which is QE’s best-ever figure.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My huge congratulations go to the boys and their teachers on a very good set of results: this is another happy day of great celebration at QE.

“Having secured their places on degree courses through achieving the grades they required, many of our leavers will now be going on to leading universities in the UK and abroad.

“And this year’s AS results, with our highest-ever percentage of A grades, will spur many of the Year 12 boys on to be even more ambitious this autumn in their university applications.”

Among the A-level results, highlights were:

• A large increase in the number of boys gaining A* in Mathematics, from 56 last year to 76 in 2019, or 62% of the candidates
• Further gains on last year’s strong figures in subjects including Geography, Art, Physics and Politics
• The inclusion of Latin among the subjects taken, for the first time in several decades. It follows the School’s reintroduction of Latin in the Lower School in 2012.

“QE really is a state school like no other, offering a very broad experience in the Sixth Form – not just A-levels, but also AS and the Extended Project Qualification, as well as a host of enriching activities including sport, music, drama and opportunities to participate in competitive events up and down the country and internationally,” said Mr Enright.

“Strong examination results are certainly important, but we keep them in their proper perspective, recognising that they are in many ways a happy by-product of bringing together the brightest minds, both boys and teachers, in an environment that cultivates intellectual curiosity and rigorous scholarship. Moreover, boys at QE are grounded and spirited, not stuffy. And they are witty, too: we laugh a lot at the School!

“This is a very exciting period in our history, in which we are reaping the rewards of the thoroughgoing work that has been done over recent years to regain the School’s high standing. QE is the reigning top state school in the Sunday Times Parent Power survey; recent Government analysis showed that we sent more pupils to Russell Group universities than any other state school over the past three years, and we are also the top selective school when measured by the Department for Education’s Progress 8 figure, which charts academic progress between the last year of primary school and GCSEs. Furthermore, we have recently had the exciting news of the success of our funding application for a new Music School – a major addition to our facilities,” Mr Enright concluded.