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A trio of Geography trips gave senior boys opportunities to learn from an international expert on poverty, from a famous explorer and from the natural terrain of South Wales.

Pupils from Years 11 and 12 visited two prestigious royal organisations in central London to hear lectures, while boys in Year 10 headed off to the Margam Field Studies Centre near Port Talbot.

Five boys from Year 12 heard Professor Katie Willis, of the Royal Holloway, University of London, lecture on Moving from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington – one of a series of RGS lectures on topical geographical issues.

Professor Willis, an expert on employment, migration and development, explored the history and development of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals and their relationship with the more recent Sustainable Development Goals.

Head of Geography Emily Parry said the trip expanded the Sixth-Formers’ knowledge of how poverty is addressed on a global scale – a topic covered in their A-level unit entitled Contemporary Conflicts and Challenges.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes’s lecture at the Royal Institution in Mayfair provided inspiration of a different kind. Under the title Living Dangerously, ‘the world’s greatest living explorer’ shared his experiences from some of his most memorable expeditions in the annual Prince’s Teaching Institute lecture.

Sir Ranulph, who was awarded an OBE in 1993, enthralled his young audience as he spoke about feats from becoming the first person to circumnavigate the world along its polar axis to discovering the lost city of Ubar on the Yemen. He also showed slides of the frostbite and gangrene he and his team had suffered during some of their expeditions.  His belief in the importance of character attributes such as resilience was a key feature of the lecture, which was attended by 15 boys from QE’s Year 11 and 12.

The Year 10 geographers’ trip to Wales enabled them to complete fieldwork in preparation for Paper 4 of their IGCSE Geography examination. The boys carried out three investigations: for their coasts topic, they investigated how sand dunes change as one moves inland; for rivers, they looked at how river characteristics change downstream, and, for the human geography topic of tourism, they investigated the impacts of tourism on the seaside resort of Porthcawl.

The Association regrets to announce the passing of Arthur Perks (OE: 1935 – 1940) at the age of 91 in February 2016.

The work of a team of QE Sixth-Formers drew plaudits when it featured at an Engineering and Science show in central London – and won a place at a showpiece national event next year.

The Year 12 team’s project – a construction industry hard-hat featuring a high-tech unit to warn wearers when noise levels exceed safe limits – was developed earlier this year under the Engineering Education Scheme as an entry in the Constructing Excellence competition.

Technology Teacher Michael Noonan: “The EES team re-focused the content of their project to reflect a more Science and Engineering-based approach, and travelled to the central London regional Big Bang Fair in Westminster Kingsway College.

“Although the fair featured very many fine examples of projects in the junior and intermediate section, the senior section was not as populated as it had been at other events – and our project therefore really stood out in terms of its depth and complexity of research. Onlookers from the construction and engineering section commented particularly on the effectiveness and ingenuity of this idea, and gave the boys many ideas for further development.”

The team comprises Sachin Ghelani, Tochi Onuora, Chris Suen and Yazad Sukhia.

Mr Noonan, who organised the visit, said that as a result of the boys’ performance and attention to detail in their presentation at the regional event, they have secured a place at the Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair in Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre in March 2017. This is not only the UK’s largest celebration of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) for young people, but also the country’s biggest youth event.

“The next challenge for the boys is to further advance the project to better their chances of picking up accolades on a national level, hopefully through collaboration with a third-party company,” he concluded.

TV’s Judge Rinder is taking part in the new series of Strictly Come Dancing – and says he was first taught to dance by the School nurse at QE.

Robert Rinder (OE 1989-1994) joins celebrity contestants including former chancellor Ed Balls and singers Anastacia and Will Young in the prime time show.

In an interview before the show with BBC Radio 1’s Scott Mills, Robert said that his previous dance experience was limited, but that he had been taught some basic dancing by his nurse at QE, Mrs Cornish. "I didn't really suit childhood terribly well so I'd go and sit in her room. She taught me how to Cha Cha, so I can do that one," he said.

Appearing on the first episode of the 14th series, Robert told a TV audience that peaked at 10.1 million: “I love Strictly because it’s absolute joy and escapism.”

The first show was held to introduce the celebrity line-up to the viewers and to pair them up with their professional dance partners. The celebrities and their partners now have three weeks to master their first routine before the live shows begin.

It was announced that Robert’s partner will be a newcomer to the show, Oksana Platero, a Ukrainian who has appeared on the US TV series Dancing with the Stars for five series, and has also worked as a choreographer for the American version of So You Think You Can Dance.

“I just can’t wait to swap the courtroom for the ballroom,” he said. “Anybody that has watched my programme knows that I am very, very serious about the law and I am always right! It will be interesting to see how the judges of Strictly judge me.”

He added that he did not take his participation in the show lightly: “If you enter a competition like this, you want to win it, don’t you?”

Robert Rinder sprang to fame when the Judge Rinder daytime show was launched two years ago. In it, he presides over cases such as disputes over consumer issues, personal and business fall-outs and allegations of negligence. The combination of hapless litigants and Robert’s waspish wit made the ITV show an instant hit. More recently, he completed a new ten-programme series called Judge Rinder’s Crime Stories, in which he looked into cases that included real-life murders.

Although not a judge, Robert is a highly successful criminal barrister and in fact has himself appeared as counsel in murder cases and other cases of serious violence, usually for the defence.  These included the manslaughter of detainees in Iraq by British servicemen and the New Year’s murders of 17-year-old Letisha Shakespeare and 18-year-old Charlene Ellis in a drive-by shooting in Birmingham in 2003.

His practice at 2 Hare Court, his London barristers’ chambers, has, however, focused mainly on international fraud, money-laundering and other financial crime. He was instructed by the British Government as counsel to the Turks and Caicos Islands’ Special Investigation and Prosecution Team, which was established by the Foreign Office to prosecute allegations of bribery, international corruption and fraud. In the UK he has advised on and appeared in cases involving fraud against the NHS, counterfeit medicines, multi-million-pound money laundering and pension fraud.

Underne won the inter-House competition at QE’s Year 7 Maths Fair for the second year running.

Named after Edward Underne, Rector of Chipping Barnet at the time the School was established in 1573, the House took first place with 643 points, ahead of Harrisons’, whose score of 593 was just enough to put Broughton, with 590, into third place. Underne were duly presented with the Scarisbrick Shield in assembly. 

Pupil Dan Suciu, now in Year 8 (pictured above on the left), said: “Underne are extremely ecstatic to win this competition. We had put a lot of effort into preparing for it and are really pleased that it paid off.”

The morning fair, which took place across two days, was inspired by the UK Mathematics Trust’s team challenge events. Boys took part in a carousel of activities, including mathematical problem- solving exercises, such as crossnumbers, and more practical activities, such as origami and tangrams (a Chinese geometrical puzzle). Then all teams took part in a relay, which combined speed in movement about the room with speed in solving a mathematical problem. 

All six Houses were also required to create a poster on What is Mathematics? The prize for best poster went to Stapylton.

Each team was supervised by a Year 12 Further Mathematics student. Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung said: “It was a great opportunity for the Sixth-Formers to interact with Year 7. We could not have run the event without their help, whether that was in supervising a team or in helping with the logistics of staging the fair.”