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Boys in Year 9 explored what makes relationships healthy and unhealthy in an hour-long assembly devoted to the topic of domestic abuse and sexual violence.

Led by representatives from Tender, a charity ‘acting to end abuse’, the boys learned about the huge scale of the domestic violence problem – one in three women and one in five men will be impacted by it. Tender’s Emily Whyte and Andrew Macklin highlighted some stark facts: on average, two women are killed each week in the UK by a current or former partner, and for men, the figure is about two per month. Overall, about 85% of victims of domestic violence are women.

The boys were also told that it is very much a young people’s issue – statistics show that those aged 16-24 are the demographic mostly likely to suffer domestic violence. The highly interactive assembly included a discussion about ‘sexting’ that followed the screening of a film featuring a case study, entitled #ListenToYourSelfie. The discussion covered appropriate and inappropriate communication through technology and in online relationships. It focused on matters of trust, coercion and manipulation, as well as how to stay safe, the dangers of sending explicit images and an understanding of the law in this area.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “As a School, we are committed to exploring these serious issues and to building awareness and understanding among our pupils, not least because of the prevalence of domestic violence among young people across the country, as the statistics reveal.

“There will be follow-up to these discussions in form groups as part of our Personal Development Time programme; in fact, we are increasingly using such special assemblies to support the programme and to give boys an additional insight and point them towards external sources of advice and support.”

There was discussion of the different forms that domestic violence can take, with the definition having been expanded in recent years beyond purely physical abuse to include areas such as controlling behaviour and emotional abuse. Boys were told that physical violence is usually preceded by at least two or three other expressions of domestic abuse.

The assembly included a quiz on healthy relationships and an activity in which boys were asked to arrange a list of behaviours along a line from ‘most healthy’ to ‘most unhealthy’. This stimulated discussion of various forms of behaviour which was geared towards helping boys identify what positive, respectful relationships based on equal power look like and, conversely, helping them to identify unhealthy relationships.

This debate concluded that, of the terms provided, ‘respect’ was the most important ‘healthy’ factor, followed by ‘trust’ and ‘listening’. There was mature debate around matters such as jealousy, control, secrets and cheating, with the discussion considering the moral, ethical and legal aspects of such behaviours.

The representatives from Tender finished by encouraging boys to think about who in their lives they could turn to for help and support if they had a concern or wanted a second opinion on a relationship. They also ‘signposted’ the boys to publicly available support services and – should they be needed – ways of reporting issues in this area.

Bilal Harry Khan is fast becoming a leading voice on issues of social justice, race and masculinity.

In recent months, Bilal has featured in a number of BBC news and current affairs programmes and has launched a successful podcast with fellow Cambridge graduates, all ‘black and mixed-race guys’, looking at life, diversity and the challenges faced after graduation.

One episode of the podcast this month featured an interview with Stormzy, following the artist’s decision to sponsor scholarships at the university for black students.

Bilal (OE 2003–2010), who works as a facilitator running diversity and inclusion training workshops with corporate clients, is due to visit the School this term to deliver a talk to Year 11 on Masculinity in Britain. He turned freelance in August: “I will be looking to develop my portfolio of work as a facilitator in the coming years.”

Earlier in the year, Bilal was a panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, also speaking about masculinity.

And this month, he was interviewed by the BBC’s Global Gender & Identity Correspondent, Megha Mohan. In the article, he related the challenges of living in the UK with a name that is unfamiliar to many – including one occasion when he visited a school (not QE) and a teacher introduced him in assembly as ‘Harry’ even though he had been repeatedly emailing the teacher and signing himself off as ‘Bilal’. The teacher later told him that ‘Bilal’ would have been “difficult” for the children, although in fact many of them had come up to him after his talk and said his name perfectly.

In his parting shot in the article, Bilal made a plea: “Children in the UK should be able to grow up loving and being proud of their names. You can play a part in that by learning to pronounce them properly. It is not that hard. If you can say ‘Tchaikovsky’, you can pronounce our names.”

He was interviewed on the BBC World Service about his mixed-race heritage in the run-up to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The royal bride had spoken of her confusion as a child when asked to describe her race and of the enduring impact of her mixed-race background during her acting career.

Bilal told presenter Nora Kim of his own experiences as a person from a mixed-race background. His father is Kenyan of South Asian heritage and his mother is Jamaican from a mixed-race (East Asian and black Caribbean) heritage.

He recalled a time when he was out with some of his QE schoolmates: “Most of my friends were Asian. Someone’s girlfriend said ‘Oh, you are the black friend.’” This conversation caused him to reflect at the time that “my identity is based on how other people perceive me”.

When used in the UK, the term ‘mixed-race’ is generally presumed to mean a combination of white and ‘something else’, he said, yet that did not describe him or many other people. “Perhaps we need to change the definition to include people like myself, like my mum,” he said.

After leaving QE, Bilal read Theology at Cambridge. While there, he met the three friends with whom he launched the Over the Bridge podcast in March this year.

Since graduating, he has worked as a youth engagement officer in Barnet and then, for more than four years, for WE, a Toronto-based non-profit organisation working globally with young people and families.

Old Elizabethan Kam Taj returned to the School to lead a workshop on Oxbridge preparation for 32 sixth-formers.

Kam, a performance coach and motivational speaker, who himself studied at Churchill College, Cambridge, covered topics ranging from university interviews to procrastination in the all-day session.

The course was part of the extensive programme QE provides to support senior boys as they make university applications and consider career choices that best match their talents and aptitudes. Applications to Oxford and Cambridge must be made by 15 October for places starting the following autumn. QE boys secured 144 places at the two universities in the five years from 2013 to 2017.

Afterwards, Kam (Kamran Tajbaksh, OE 2004–2011) praised his Year 12 audience who had “stayed engaged and receptive for the duration of the course”, even though, as he pointed out, they had just completed their examinations and were looking forward to the start of the summer holidays in just a few days’ time.

While at QE, Kam achieved 13 A* grades at GCSE and four A*s with one A at A-level. On graduating with a first in Manufacturing Engineering, Kam initially took up a post as a management consultant with a global company. However, he had begun doing performance coaching work while still at university: “It was far more fulfilling than academics (even more so than my sports!) – and my clients were achieving great results.”

So, in 2016, he “left the strategy consulting world and began living my dream for myself”.
He recently published his first book 8 Principles of Exam Domination, which aims to help pupils achieve their desired grades with minimal stress.

His talk covered topics entitled:

• Acing uni interviews
• Overcoming procrastination
• Planning & prioritisation
• Mindset management

Kam also introduced a new topic, with the QE boys the first to hear about his Motivational Fire Formula.

Afterwards, Kam thanked the School from his Instagram account and wished all the boys a “great summer” and hoped they would “come back refreshed and ready to smash Year 13!”

A series of special events have been helping boys due to join Year 7 in September start to get to know each other and learn their way around the campus.

The half-day induction sessions for the boys and their parents offered opportunities for the soon-to-be Elizabethans to meet those who will be in their form groups, as well as their form tutors and their Head of Year.

Headmaster Neil Enright explained to them what ‘the QE experience’ entails, while current boys, including School Captain Aashish Khimasia, of Year 12, and three boys at the end of their first year, added their perspectives.

“These events are about welcoming the boys and their families and helping support the transition to secondary school, ensuring that there are some familiar faces come September,” explained Mr Enright afterwards. “The induction sessions also make clear that it is, in fact, the whole family that is joining the Elizabethan community and that parents (through our home-school partnership) will play a very significant role in the success of their sons.”

After hearing from the Headmaster and these current pupils, the boys headed off into their new form groups for activities designed both to enable them to become acquainted with each other and to learn more about the School itself.

The activities included a tour of the School, led by prefects, with an accompanying quiz for the boys to complete on their way round. “One of the big challenges of going to secondary school can be the sheer scale of the site, so anything to help new boys get their bearings is useful,” said Mr Enright.

Parents were given further briefings by QE’s leadership, including an introduction to the School’s support systems and the role of the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s. They then had the opportunity to talk to the Headmaster over coffee.

A local man who almost died from anorexia as a teenager, but has now successfully recovered, gave a brutally honest account of his experiences to Year 9.

In his first-ever talk to a school audience, Jack Jacobs told the QE boys how the eating disorder almost claimed his life, before he took the important step of asking for help and then fought his way back to health.

Having decided he wanted to make a positive difference to others and help bring about positive change, he is now establishing a foundation, No Limits, to help people reach their full potential.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Jack’s was an inspiring story that clearly engaged the boys and got them thinking. It was shocking to hear how bad things got, but he showed how, with resilience and perseverance, even in the most trying of circumstances you can turn things around and make a success of yourself.”

Jack was invited to QE because of the general recognition that anorexia is a growing problem among teenage boys nationally, an increasing number of whom are afflicted by body-image issues that lead to them not eating properly or to over-exercising. Eating disorders and body dysmorphia are both addressed in QE’s new Mental Health and Wellbeing Policy.

Although not a former QE pupil, Jack comes from the local area. He told the Year 9 boys that despite playing rugby and cricket, he was a little “chubby” at school and that his fellow pupils and even some teachers indulged in name-calling and labelled him “fat”.

When he and his family moved to a new house on a long road, he took the opportunity to lose weight by running up and down that road. Determined to get in shape, he “ran and swam and then ran and swam”. He lost two-and-a-half stone in three months at the age of 14, yet the name-calling continued.

He therefore decided to run in a mini-marathon, driven on by teachers who had told him “you can’t run”. They were quickly proved wrong when he competed at Lea Valley with far more experienced runners and came in the top ten. He was scouted for a running club and emerged as a very strong runner, as evidenced by his 5k time of just 18 minutes.

He was, he told the boys, motivated by a desire to prove others wrong, so he started doing all the things people said he was not capable of doing. But he became fixated on fitness, food and counting calories. In short, he was starving himself.

Even at the time, he recognised that his behaviour was becoming unhealthy, and yet, he said, that was almost the point: “I wanted to look ill. If my dad said: ‘You look well today,’ it would upset me and make me want to lose more weight. I was a zombie, focused on numbers: the numbers on the scales would determine my day.”

Eventually Jack broke down and sought the assistance of others. “Asking for help is not weak, it’s strong – it shows you are self-aware, which is really important in life,” he told Year 9.

He ended up in hospital, with a heartbeat of 33 bpm and a blood pressure of 70/40 – readings that indicate a patient is close to death. The doctors took him up to another ward in the hospital where other teenagers were being fed by tubes because they wouldn’t eat. Seeing this, he made the decision to “grow”, that is, to get better.

As he began his recovery, he again had people telling him he could not do certain things, including doctors advising him not to take his GCSEs, but just to focus on eating. Jack feels the system treats people as “numbers”, rather than as individuals, but he believes “if you have self-respect, that is all you need and you can do it”.

A few months after being in hospital, he sat his GCSEs and achieved an A* grade, 8 As and a couple of Bs. “Don’t let people tell you that you can’t do things,” he said.

Jack stressed the merits of talking oneself into a better position: “What you say to yourself is what you become.” Having not been physically or mentally well enough to go anywhere for about a year, he then went to college. He started saying he had recovered (even doing so for a programme on ITV) – and then felt that he had to live up to this.

He also began saying that he would be working for a leading firm of accountants in two years’ time on their school-leaver programme. He duly achieved this, getting through a seven-stage interview process. However, once there, he decided that his money-motivated colleagues were not the sort of people he really wanted to be working with – he wanted to work for positive change. It was important, he concluded, that we all ask ourselves: “What do we want to be remembered for?” People were, after all, remembered not for their money, but for who they really were, he said.

QE has added to its comprehensive pastoral support with the launch of an external online counselling service for the boys.

Through carefully structured pastoral provision, great efforts are made at the School to ensure boys are both happy and resilient, as well as successful in their academic endeavours. The latest addition to this provision, Kooth, is a free, safe support service for young people that is anonymous for its users.

Kooth is a platform run under the auspices of XenZone, an organisation set up by members of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP) to facilitate easy access to high-quality mental health support and to information on emotional well-being.

The service, which offers online counselling between noon and 10pm daily, was introduced to QE boys in assemblies by Tim Coombe, one of Xenzone’s representatives. He challenged perceptions that it is not manly to ask for help or to talk about your emotions, saying: “It’s ok to admit you’re not ok.”

He added that boys currently are statistically much less likely to look for support than girls. “It is really important that boys engage too. You need to look after your mental health in the way you would your physical health,” he told the pupils.

The service is professionally run and, as it is moderated in real-time, no inappropriate content can be published and nobody be bullied in its forums. Kooth gives secure access to trained counsellors if needed. “Within minutes online, you can get access to support that would take months to access in the community,” said Mr Coombe.

He stressed that just because a boy does not need such support now, it does not mean that he might not in the future. “You never know what will happen; you can be fine, then one day have a problem. Take a look at the website and set up a profile now so that it will be there if you need advice or support in the future.”

Kooth complements the provision already in place at QE in-house through form tutors, the pastoral team and peer mentoring, and through the School’s counselling partnership with the New Barnet charity, Rephael House, whose counsellors come into School.

David Ryan, Assistant Head for the Upper School and Pupil Progression, said: “It is important that boys are open to asking for help in School, or through such services as Kooth when they need reassurance or advice.”

“School is here to support you when you do face difficulties,” he told Year 11 boys in their assembly.

• • The Kooth website, https://kooth.com/, contains articles suitable for young people, looking at issues from self-image to depression.