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QE has taken first prize in a new national competition aimed at developing skills in STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

More than 400 teams entered The Bright Ideas Challenge. QE, who had already been named regional winners, were announced as national winners at Make the Future London. This was a four-day festival of innovation hosted by the competition’s backers, energy company Shell, at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, during which the ideas of all the regional winners were showcased.

Congratulating the QE’s Team Algae to Power from Year 8, Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Competitions such as the Bright Ideas Challenge help to reinforce the relevance of what our boys learn in the classroom and show how ideas can lead to practical solutions in the real world. I am very proud of what the QE team has achieved and am delighted that their hard work and creativity has brought them this success.”

Team members Viren Patel, Eeshan Banerjee, Thomas Mgbor and Deshram Ganeshamoorthy won £3,500 for the School to support STEM teaching. This was in addition to their prize as regional winners: a tablet computer each and £1,500 for the School.

The competition was open to pupils aged 11–14. Entrants were challenged to apply their STEM skills to devise ways of powering the cities of the future.

The QE team looked at supplying clean sustainable renewable energy in the form of biogas, using algae growing on buildings to convert biomass into energy, producing fuel for hydrogen cars. The idea involves recycling the carbon dioxide produced by burning biogas and using it to feed algae that has been genetically modified to photosynthesise more efficiently. Competition organisers said this idea could promote a better quality of life for future city-dwellers.

During an enjoyable day at the Olympic Park, the boys were interviewed by Erik Bonino, the Chairman of Shell UK, and by Rachel Riley, mathematician and TV presenter, best known for co-presenting Countdown and The Gadget Show.  They were also photographed with both and their victory was celebrated on the Shell website.

A married couple who both survived the Nazi Holocaust as children spoke to the whole of Year 9 when they visited the School.

Peter and Marianne Summerfield’s talk complemented the boys’ Year 9 History syllabus, which covers the World War II period and includes a module on the Holocaust entitled Genocide and Intolerance.

The Headmaster, Neil Enright, said: “It was our pleasure and privilege to welcome Mr and Mrs Summerfield to the School.

“We cleared the afternoon timetable in order to devote plenty of time to their talk and to give the boys time to reflect on the very important lessons that it conveyed. I know that the boys greatly appreciated the visit and it is my hope that they will now play their part in ensuring that the Holocaust is never forgotten.”

Mr Summerfield was born as an identical twin in Berlin in Germany in 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. By the time of his birth, his parents were already suffering from the restrictions placed on Jewish people by the Nazis and, from 1936, they tried to find a country which would accept the family as immigrants. Eventually they received permission to leave Germany after a distant uncle said he would be a guarantor with financial responsibility for the family.

In August 1939 the family was finally able to escape Berlin on the last train before war was declared. However, all their possessions and even their luggage were stolen, so they arrived in England in that month penniless and with only their hand-luggage.

Mr Summerfield vividly remembers his early experiences of Berlin and of this eventful journey, which he recounted to the boys. His grandmother and uncle were later murdered by the Nazi regime. 

After the war, he and his brother completed two years’ National Service in the British Army, including time on active service in Egypt.  He then went on to study Law at Oxford and qualified as a solicitor.

Mrs Summerfield was born in Breslau, Germany, which is now Wroclaw in Poland, in July 1938.

Her parents were both dismissed from their careers in the legal profession because they were Jewish.

On Kristallnacht (9th November 1938), her father was arrested, along with thousands of other Jewish men, and sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Her mother managed to persuade an official at the Gestapo Headquarters to find a missing letter which gave permission for him to live and work in England. After receiving this letter, her mother went straight to the camp with it and her father was released and immediately travelled to London. Mrs Summerfield and her mother were able to join him in February 1939.

After finishing school, Mrs Summerfield became a teacher and then went on to open a chain of nursery schools. She later opened a school teaching English as a foreign language.

The couple have been married for more than 40 years; they have five children and 12 grandchildren.

For the first time – at least in recent history – QE’s winning House for the academic year was announced in front of the whole School.

Boys from Years 7–10 – all the pupils not currently on study leave – gathered and sat in their Houses in the Shearly Hall for the end-of-year assembly.

Headmaster Neil Enright presented the Eric Shearly House Cup to Stapylton’s House Captain, Tochi Onuora, and House Vice Captain Dhruv Patel. Stapylton had amassed the greatest total of points over a year of keenly fought competition.

The eagerly awaited presentation was the climax of this special assembly, which also featured a number of reports and other presentations, as well as performances from four of QE’s young musicians. In previous years, the winning House had been presented with the cup in House assembly, and the presentation was therefore not witnessed by boys from any of the other houses.

“My congratulations go to Stapylton on their achievement, which is the culmination of a year of effort and endeavour,” said Mr Enright. “By bringing all the boys together for the presentation, we sought to bolster still further the boys’ sense of allegiance to their Houses.”

The year-long inter-House competition takes account of points given both to individuals and to teams. Throughout the year, boys have opportunities to earn merits, while there are a large number of House competitions.

2014–15 winners Stapylton repeated their achievement this year despite not winning Sports Day, which accounts for a significant proportion of the overall points to be won. Sports Day was won by Harrisons’.

The assembly featured explanation of what the House system is and what it does, highlighting especially the important role played PE and Games. The boys heard from four Year 12 pupils – Senior Vice-Captains Ché Applewhaite and Adrian Burbie, followed by Vice Captains Bushry Basheer and Nitharsan Sathiyalingam. The Sixth-Formers explained the ethos behind QE’s House system, covering the importance of allegiance, of competition and of charity events. They also spoke about the nature of the charity fundraising events organised by the Houses – such as this year’s staff football match. And they announced that there are to be bigger and better such events in the future, together with more themed House assemblies.

During the assembly, PE teachers Rhys Davies-Horne, James Clarke, Jon Hart and Head of Games Mark Peplow gave end-of-year summaries for each of the year groups. Mr Peplow was making his final assembly appearance before leaving the School this summer after 15 years.

Elaine White, Drama Co-ordinator, presented the Silver Arts Award to a number of boys for the work they have done in drama over the past year.

There were musical interludes from: Year 9 pianist Drew Sellis, playing Misty by Errol Garner; cellist Tai Oyama, also of Year 9, playing J S Bach’s Prelude from Cello Suite no. 3; Year 10 pianist Marc Hill, playing Hamburg’s arrangement of Over the Rainbow, and Year 7 flautist Aadarsh Khimasia, accompanied on the piano by fellow Year 7 pupil Shivas Patel, playing Gossec’s Tambourin.

The 2016 A-level results at Queen Elizabeth’s are the best ever recorded at the School. In total, 98.8% of the 499 examinations taken were awarded grades A*-B.

The record performance means that the benchmark A*-B figure has now exceeded 98% in four of the past five years.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This is very good news and is a just reward for the efforts of our pupils and their teachers. The performance has really been stellar across all subjects and I am very grateful to the bright and capable staff who teach here.

“Our boys are fun to be around and enjoyable to teach. They constantly evince a hunger for intellectual argument and for knowledge; they are keen to stretch themselves. In addition, they are involved in many pursuits outside of lessons, including sport, the performing arts and other non-academic activities.”

Top State School – The Daily Telegraph, Friday 19 August 2016

Top State School – The Times, Friday 19 August 2016

A-level results 2016: results from 300 state schools, The Telegraph online, Friday 19 August 2016

Barnet pupils excel with impressive A-level results, Barnet Times, Friday 19 August 2016

The rounded nature of education at QE was also stressed by some of the many successful Year 13 boys. Harry Riley, who gained an A* and two As to secure his first choice of History at Warwick University, said: “You hear a lot about it being an academic school – and it’s true that they know what they are doing with exams – but there’s also a large amount of extra-curricular activity. It’s a very rich educational experience.” And Akshat Joshi, whose three A*s and an A secured his place to read Economics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, said: “Essentially, QE turns you into a well-rounded person, rather than just a walking textbook!”

Mr Enright added that the School placed great value on producing character in its pupils – an emphasis that is to the fore in the new 2016-2020 School Development Plan. Pupil Sahil Handa, who arrived at QE in Year 7 after a period of living in India, agrees. “The school has formed me and my character the whole way through.” He has won a place at Harvard in the US, one of two boys to gain places at Ivy League universities.

In addition, 36 boys secured offers from Oxford or Cambridge, while there were 30 places offered for degree courses in Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Science.

Mathematics and Further Mathematics had the highest number of entries, with 121 and 27 respectively.  No mathematicians received a grade lower than B, and in Mathematics, 57 boys – or 47% – achieved an A* grade, while 17 boys – 63% – gained this top grade in Further Mathematics. Mr Enright described these results as “simply stunning”.

This year’s headline figure of 98.8% at grades A*–B outstrips both last year’s 98.4% and the previous record of 98.5%, set in 2012.

All 179 Year 11 pupils at Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet, reached the Government’s key GCSE benchmark of five A*-C grades including English and Mathematics.  In fact, QE far exceeded the national measure: 98% of pupils secured five or more A*-A grades, while these top two grades also accounted for 89% of all GCSEs taken.

The GCSE results come a week after QE’s best-ever A-level results, which saw the boys’ grammar school once again take the number 1 place in the Times’ and Daily Telegraph’s national league tables of state schools.

99.4% of candidates achieved the Government’s other preferred GCSE measure, the EBacc, by gaining A*-C passes in English, Mathematics, History or Geography, Science and a language.

Nearly 61% of the 1,788 GCSEs taken at QE received an A* this year: 2016 is the fifth consecutive year in which the percentage of examinations awarded this highest possible grade has exceeded 60%.

Congratulating the boys, Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This year group is very characterful, with an especially wide range of different interests. They represent very well the broad and varied approach to education here that underpins our academic success. They have worked hard and taken inspiration from the staff.”

Of particular note among the school’s GCSE results was the performance in Mathematics: 174 boys, or 97% of the year, received an A*. The Science results were also extremely strong, with every single Biology candidate awarded A*.

“There were in fact excellent results across a wide variety of subjects, including those for which boys sit the rigorous IGCSE examinations,” Mr Enright added. “Our pupils have laid a very firm foundation for the start of their Sixth Form courses in the new term.

“Both at last week’s A-level results and this week’s GCSEs, I have been thrilled to share these successes with parents as well as the boys. I would like to pay tribute to the great support afforded by our parents to their sons, not only in supporting academic work at home but also through their turning out in considerable numbers to drama productions, concerts, sports events and similar occasions.”

Other noteworthy aspects of this year’s results included:

• • A perfect performance by the first group of boys to learn Spanish, an after-school activity introduced three years ago, when the boys were in Year 9. All seven GCSE candidates gained an A*.

• • In total, 118 boys took separate Science GCSEs. All 118 gained an A* in Biology; in Physics, 116 received A* and two were awarded As; in Chemistry, 112 secured A*s, while six had As.

• • In Year 10, all 14 boys taking the Edexcel Higher Project Level 2 were awarded an A*. This qualification gives pupils the chance to study a topic of their choice in depth.

• • Full GCSEs were taken in 21 subjects, with a further two short-course GCSEs in Religious Studies and PE.

GCSEs: results from schools in Harrow, Edgware, Mill Hill, Hendon, Finchley, Barnet and Potters Bar – The Barnet Times, Thursday 25 August 2016

The Telegraph – Friday 26 August 2016

The Times – Friday 26 August 2016