Viewing archives for

Year 7 pupil Yusuf Karim heads off to Italy to represent England at karate this week. 

Yusuf will compete in the Karate European Championships 2016 in Montichiari, having already taken a medal for his country at the World Championships in Dublin earlier in the year.

Yusuf won silver in the Team Kata category in Ireland and just missed bronze in the Individual category – a performance which placed him fourth among some 90 competitors from all over the world.

After starting in the sport four years ago, Yusuf moved to the England Shotokan Karate Federation around 18 months ago and was initially selected to take part in local competitions. Then at the Welsh Open last year he won gold and silver medals. At this year’s Polish Open 2016, held in Szczezin, he won the Team Kata gold medal and Individual Kata gold medal against opposition from Polish, Czech and Romanian competitors. And recently at the UK Open, he took the Team Kata bronze (Open category) and Individual Kata Silver (11-13 years).

Yusuf follows a training regime, training at different dojos to benefit from working with different squad members. He routinely travels from his home in East London to Lewisham in South London for three hours of squad training every Saturday and trains twice a week for two hours after school in Forest Gate. Sundays see him travelling as far as afield as Sheffield, Birmingham and Wales for UK-wide competitions. And in the run-up to the World Union of Karate-Do Federation’s (WUKF) World Championships in Dublin, he and his family made the trip to training almost every day.

Members of QE’s new VEX Robotics Club for Years 8 and 9 will be preparing to take part in competition next year – and having a great deal of fun in the meantime!

Organised by technology teacher Michael Noonan, the club will enter teams in the worldwide VEX Robotics Competition, in which participants have to build and then program a robot to complete certain tasks.

“The aim of this club is to foster highly competitive, assertive and creative young robotic engineers while also developing team spirit by putting pupils together with boys from another year group,” said Mr Noonan. “Members will be taking part in local rounds in January and February in the hope of qualifying for the national competition in March, but if we reach that stage in our first year, that will be a bonus, really – our primary aim for now is to have fun experimenting and designing through robotics!”

The after-school club meets three times each week. So far, the boys have been exploring basic designs and concepts, and have been looking at some of the successes of neighbouring schools such as East Barnet School and Henrietta Barnett as a source of inspiration and motivation.

The influential Labour peer and entrepreneur, Lord Alli, was the latest guest speaker at QE’s thriving Politics Society.

He told the boys about his rise to wealth and fame from humble beginnings and his role in the Labour Party in years past, but also gave his assessment of Labour’s position today. And while Jeremy Corbyn’s analysis of the problems facing British society, including inequality and the pitfalls of globalisation, was correct, his strategy for tackling them was not: it made Labour unelectable, Lord Alli said. Yet the answer was not simply a question of turning back the clock: he ruled out a return to New Labour centrism.

The visit by Baron Alli of Norbury was arranged by Adrian Burbie and the meeting was chaired by Adrian’s successor as president of the Politics Society, Rehaan Bapoo.

Rehaan reported that Lord Alli’s account of his early years in South London revealed that he and his family were extremely poor and could, for example, ill afford ‘luxuries’, such as suits for job interviews. To this day, he is unable to open brown envelopes, because of the trauma that bills once brought to the household.

Both his parents are from the Carribean. His mother, a nurse, is from Trinidad, while his estranged father, a mechanic, is from Guyana (formerly British Guiana).

He began his life in business as a junior researcher in a finance magazine, where he compiled monthly business reports – a skill for which he quickly gained a strong reputation. He became an investment banker in the City, where he thrived and first became wealthy.

Lord Alli then set up 24 Hour Productions in the late 1980s with Charlie Parsons, his life and business partner. In 1992, the company merged with Bob Geldof’s Planet Pictures to form Planet 24, one of the largest TV production companies in the UK.

In 2001, with Elisabeth Murdoch he co-founded Shine Media, a media production company, and retains part-ownership.

He is a former chairman of ASOS.com, a brand he helped to set up that is now worth £5.8 billion. He sold half his stake in ASOS in order to set up Silvergate Media, in August 2011.

Now a multi-millionaire, he told the boys that he believed the rich (including himself) should pay much higher levels of tax.

Lord Alli joined the Labour Party in the mid-1990s, believing that not enough young people were in politics, and feeling that he wanted to make a change and have his voice heard.

Following the sudden death of Labour leader John Smith in 1994, it was he who wrote to Tony Blair, persuading him to stand as Leader of the Labour Party and offering his services to Blair’s leadership election campaign. Blair accepted.

He was a member of Tony Blair’s ‘kitchen Cabinet’ and, Lord Alli told the boys, Blair requested his help on numerous occasions: the PM wanted to reach out to younger members of the public and to increase their interest in politics.

In 1998, he was appointed to the House of Lords, becoming the youngest-ever member at only 34 years of age, as well as the first openly gay member. It was during a heated exchange with Conservative opponents, led by Baroness Young, that he revealed that he was gay. In April 1999, he said in a speech to the House: "I have never been confused about my sexuality. I have been confused about the way I am treated as a result of it. The only confusion lies in the prejudice shown, some of it tonight. and much of it enshrined in the law.”

He was instrumental in the ultimately successful campaigns to: repeal Section 28 – a part of the Local Government Act which which prohibited local authorities from promoting homosexuality; to reduce the age for consent for homosexuals from 18 to 16, and, in 2009, to repeal various clauses in the 2004 Civil Partnerships Act which prevented religious institutions from having Civil Partnerships registered on their land.

Lord Alli took the introduction of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 under David Cameron’s Tory premiership to be “a sign of his lasting legacy” and an indication that true progress had been made.

A successful exhibition has marked the completion of Greg White’s Master’s degree at Goldsmiths and he has now embarked on his professional career.

Having taken his undergraduate degree in Creative Music Technology at the University of East Anglia, Greg (OE 2004–2011) has been studying on Goldsmiths MA in Computational Arts.

For the course’s final exhibition, entitled Metasis, held in New Cross, London, this autumn, Greg continued his work on In C++, a software-driven installation based on minimalist composer Terry Riley’s seminal 1964 piece, In C. C++ is one of the programming languages taught on the Goldsmiths course. He also showed a new photography project centred around the brutalist architecture of London's Barbican Centre. His work was shown alongside his fellow students' pieces, which featured influences ranging from Tibetan calligraphy to quantum computing.

“I’m happy to say that the Goldsmiths exhibition went very well— there was lots of interest, great feedback, and happy faces,” said Greg. “Afterwards I was invited to the Barbican to give a short talk as part of their Interfaces Monthly event, which was all about sound art this month. I was very happy to do that as I love the Barbican!”

“I’m now officially finished with the Master’s and am moving on to freelance work doing sound for artists and installations. I am currently working with a photographer/visual artist from the Royal College of Art for some upcoming shows next year.”

While at QE, Greg was a drummer and percussionist who also played bass guitar. He performed with the Concert Band, the Big Band and the Symphony Orchestra, playing at concerts both in the UK and overseas.

He achieved A* grades in his Music Technology and Art & Design A-levels, an A in English and a B in Sociology.

At East Anglia, he was one of only eight students to be awarded one of the university’s Vice-Chancellor’s scholarships, given to those of ‘outstanding ability and potential’.

Special workshops conducted by a pioneering North London charity have been held for Year 10 as part of the School’s efforts to keep its pupils safe and guard against extremism.

The workshops were organised by QE’s Head of Pupil Development, Sarah Westcott, as an element within the School’s pastoral development curriculum.

They are being run by the JAN Trust. Based in Wood Green, this charity has drawn plaudits from national politicians including David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Hazel Blears and Boris Johnson.

Dr Westcott says: “The workshops aimed to identify how extremist groups, from the far right through to ISIS, use media to influence and recruit young people. They covered the ways in which young people can be targeted through online forums and how students can protect themselves from being targeted by such groups.”

In addition, the workshops included guidance on how to recognise extremist views and what pupils should do if they suspected a friend or someone else they knew was being radicalised.

“The limits of free speech were discussed, with students asked to consider the difference between a free exchange of views and hate speech,” added Dr Westcott.

JAN Trust founder Rafaat Mughal has for over 40 years supported and empowered black, Asian, minority-ethnic and refugee women. Her fellow director, Sajda Mughal, who presented the workshops at QE, became determined to work within her community to strengthen the part that women play in building a stronger, safer society after narrowly escaping death in the 7/7 London terrorist attacks of 2005.

Today, while continuing its extensive involvement with women, the trust also works with girls, boys and men, championing social and community cohesion through services including its schools projects and its initiative against forced marriages. In fact, it has worked with more than 10,000 young people and adults in schools across London and the UK.

The JAN Trust’s website states: “We believe one of the best ways to prevent issues such as violence against women and girls and extremism is by educating our young people so that they are equipped with the skills to safeguard themselves, their peers and their family members.” The trust’s schools training is designed to raise awareness and to deconstruct myths surrounding sensitive topics.
Following the workshops, the trust’s experts are also leading some staff training at QE in December.

The JAN Trust will thus be helping QE fulfil the aims of its safeguarding policy, which include enabling pupils “to have optimum life chances and enter adulthood successfully” and providing “all staff with the necessary information to enable them to meet their statutory responsibilities to promote and safeguard the wellbeing” of the boys.