QE boys took the honours at a literature quiz, comfortably beating all the other schools in the competition.
QE entered two teams in the North London heat of the Kids’ Lit Quiz and, by half-way through the contest, they were competing closely for the lead, while standing some eight points ahead of the third-placed team.
English teacher Alex Ulyet said: “They held on to this right until the end and the only question was whether the Year 7 or Year 8 team would clinch the top spot, but Year 8 nudged in front by about two points.
“On the day both teams were fantastic. We were a little worried at first as it seemed every other table was celebrating every question they got right, whilst the two QE teams stayed relatively silent. This was, however, clearly just their calm, composed natures!”
The quiz heat at Queenswood School in Hatfield was part of the nationally run Kids’ Lit Quiz, which aims to test young people’s knowledge of literature. The two groups of four boys had prepared for the event in Monday lunchtime practice sessions overseen by Mr Ulyet and QE Librarian Ciara Murray. They were given questions based on known categories in the Kids’ Lit Quiz. These included, for example, sci-fi, mythology and fish.
Besides their performance in the main competition, the QE boys did extremely well in the bonus questions between rounds, several of them winning book tokens.
“Both teams seemed to really enjoy just being able to revel in their knowledge of children’s and young adult fiction. There was a sense that it left them with an even greater desire to go out and read some of the books which they heard questions about but had not yet read, which is of course the most important thing,” Mr Ulyet added.
The winning Year 8 team comprised: Yashaswar Kotakadi; Leo Dane-Liebesny; Ishaan Mehta and Conall Walker.
The Year 7 runners-up were: Parth Kapadia; Arjun Patel; Ewan Penhale and Siddharth Sridhar.