QE pupil Kalil Rouse won a London-wide award after achieving 11A* grades and 1A in his GCSEs.

Kalil, 16, was presented with the London Schools and the Black Child award for outstanding GCSE achievement in a ceremony at the House of Commons. He had been one of three boys shortlisted for the award and only found out he had won the top prize at the ceremony. He was presented with his award by Meg Hillier, MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch.

Kalil is an accomplished chorister and instrumental musician, having attained Grade 7 on trumpet. He has also received numerous awards for rugby.

Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, organised the awards, which are now in their second year, to counter negative black stereotypes in the media. “I wanted to show that there are young people out there who are doing amazing things,” she said. “Britain is brilliant in how well everyone gets along together, but it is very important to counteract what you see in the media."

Kalil said: "I was speechless for about ten seconds when I heard. But I worked hard for it.

His father, Don Rouse, Kalil's father, said the awards help dispel “prejudice and negativity”. He added: "We need to get rid of the idea that black boys are just going to hang around on street corners and mug people, which has been embedded for many years."

Old Elizabethan rower Tom Aggar won a gold medal for Great Britain in the adaptive sculler singles class at the World Championships in Munich.

Tom, who is 23, achieved an extremely close victory in the final after a desperate struggle with multiple world champion Dominic Moneypenny. He had taken up rowing only nine months before.

Days earlier, he had become Britain’s first adaptive rower to secure his place at the Beijing Paralympics after winning his heat by 18 seconds.

Queen Elizabeth's School’s European Youth Parliament Team is to represent the UK at an international debating event in Istanbul in April 2008.

The team secured their place at the International Session after beating well known schools such as Cheltenham Ladies’ College at the National Session in Durham. They debated 15 issues of international importance, with one of the debates being held entirely in French. The National Session is a four-day conference that combines teambuilding, committee work and a parliamentary general assembly. The QE team had first been selected to represent the South-East at the National Session after a debating tournament held in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where they had trounced schools including the City of London School for Girls.

The European Youth Parliament (EYP) is an educational foundation that aims to build on the potential of young people by strengthening skills such as communication, teambuilding, trust and understanding and by working with others from very different backgrounds. It is active in over 27 countries across Europe with local, regional, national and international events.

In the UK the EYP organises 14 regional events, allowing young people to debate contemporary European issues. In school teams, students make speeches to defend or oppose a parliamentary resolution, and discuss them in a constructive atmosphere. From each regional forum one team is selected to represent their region at the National Session, which is the highlight of the EYPUK calendar. Two schools are then selected to represent the UK the autumn and spring international sessions of the EYP.