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Fifteen recent old boys of the School were among 35 representatives of a wide range of occupations who attended QE’s Careers Convention.

Boys and their parents were able to choose from a number of 20-minute talks, during which experts gave an overview of careers in medicine, dentistry, investment banking and engineering research. There were also talks about working for Amazon as well as one on the benefits of studying abroad.

The event, which is for Year 11 boys and their parents, aims to help boys prepare for their future by presenting them with extensive information on possible career paths. Armed with this information and with a realistic assessment of their own aptitudes and abilities, they can then plan their Sixth Form studies and extra-curricular activities confident in the knowledge that they are investing their time wisely in pursuit of a fulfilling professional life.

A diverse selection of employers in both the private and public sectors were represented at the event, including:

• Amazon
• Balfour Beatty (engineering)
• Capgemini (a management consulting company)
• Collyer Bristow and Dentons (law firms)
• EY (formerly Ernst & Young)
• MHA (a national association of independent accountants)
• National Audit Office
• Pentland Brands (brand management)
• Public Health England
• Shell
• Transport for London

Among the Old Elizabethans who gave up their time to attend the convention was Alex Koizia (OE 2007-2014), who discussed the medical school application process with QE’s aspiring medics. Alex is in his third year at St George’s Hospital Medical School, University of London.

Nick Holgate (OE 1995-2002), an Exploration Geoscientist with Shell, enjoyed discussing geoscience as a career with the boys.

Another Careers Convention participant was Krishan Dave (OE 2002-2009), who is an investment performance analyst at Northern Trust Corporation, an American financial services company.

And Drew Williams (OE 2005-2012) spoke about EY’s five-year School Leaver Programme, which he joined after leaving the Sixth Form and through which he is studying towards his ACA Chartered Accountant qualification.

The autumn Careers Convention is one of a number of ways in which the School helps pupils prepare for their future. Many Year 11 boys take part every year in The Challenge, part of the National Citizen Service. This involves a three-week summer holiday programme and three autumn weekends, during which young people from a wide variety of backgrounds work together on a range of projects, developing new skills and building on existing ones. All QE boys undertake work experience placements at the end of Year 11, while in Year 12, boys are expected to commit 40 hours per year to serving the wider community through the School’s voluntary service programme.

Three senior boys from the same form are benefiting from a Royal Academy of Arts programme focusing on future careers.

Nabil Haque, Tochi Onuora and Scott Tan, of Year 13, are among only 50 A-level Art students who were selected from state schools across London to take part in attRAct, which stands for art through the Royal Academy careers and creative training.

QE has a long record of boys winning places on the programme, which include workshops, exhibition tours, studio visits, mentoring and careers & portfolio advice.

Head of Art Stephen Buckeridge said: “Participating in the scheme has been particularly helpful to all three students, especially as they have all applied to study Architecture at university – at Cambridge, The Bartlett (UCL’s faculty of the built environment) and at Harvard in the USA. The programme has offered an opportunity to take part in city sketching and in portfolio tutorial sessions with architectural students, as well as to receive mentoring from practicing architects.”

“They have all enjoyed unique experiences which have provided inspiration and context for course work and afforded them opportunities that are not available at School.”

Tochi Onuora summarised the benefits of attRAct for him: “The skills developed, coupled with the opportunity to form connections with other art students from both school and university, have made this an invaluable experience.” He added that he felt the programme underlined the importance of Art being made available to young people.

Shown here are two of Nabil’s recent paintings, The Watchtower and The Crane. They derive from his personal interest in great dystopian architectural structures and are influenced by Soviet architecture and by The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, an early 19th-century painting by the German Romantic artist, Caspar David Friedrich.

“The Crane is powerful in every sense,” said Nabil. “It looms over the landscape I have created in order to make the viewer feel smaller and insignificant.”

QE convincingly beat other leading London schools to win the regional heat of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Top of the Bench competition for the third consecutive year.

The School has now won the heat five times in the past seven years. This year, QE emerged as comfortable victors, with a total of 81 points, beating University College School into second place on 72 points, while Westminster School took third, with 67. The team now go on to the UK final in Loughborough University in April.

As in previous years, the boys were prepared for the heat in Ealing by Chemistry teacher Elizabeth Kuo.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “For the boys to achieve so highly against considerable competition is an extraordinary achievement. My congratulations go to them and their teacher.”

The competition is open to pupils aged 14–16 who are studying Chemistry. QE’s team comprised: Year 9 boys Bhargab Ghoshal and George Popa; Bhiramah Rammanohar, of Year 10, and Tharunkumar Muthu Gurunath, who is in Year 11.

Of the eight rounds, QE won three outright and was placed equal first in round 4.

To be successful, competitors had to know the periodic table very well, Dr Kuo explained. The titles and subjects of rounds included Odd Man Out, General Chemistry Knowledge, Calculations and Identifying Substances from Information Given. Most questions were for the whole team but each team member also had to face a number of individual questions.

Eight Sixth-Formers – double last year’s total – have qualified for the British Mathematical Olympiad, placing them in the ranks of the country’s very best young mathematicians.

They were among 119 Sixth-Form mathematicians who sat the UK Mathematics Trust’s Senior Challenge. To qualify for the Olympiad, they had to score least 106 points out of a possible 125.

The eight included Tochi Onuora, who took the Best in School accolade with a score of 121, and Aneesh Chopada, who was named Best in Year 12.

A further ten boys qualified for the other follow-on round from the challenge, the Senior Kangaroo, which required a score of at least 90 points.
Overall, 103 boys, or 87% of the QE entrants, were awarded certificates – 22 gold, 39 silver and 42 bronze. These are given in the ratio 1:2:3 to the top 40% of participants nationwide.

The challenge involves answering 25 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes.

QE took on some of the region’s leading schools in a national team-based Mathematics competition.

The team of four Sixth-Formers came fourth out of 20 teams in the Senior Team Maths Challenge regional heat, hosted by Merchant Taylors’ School, scoring 147 points out of a possible 180. First place went to North London Collegiate School, second to Merchant Taylor’s and third to Harrow, while the QE boys finished ahead of Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ and Watford Grammar School for Boys.

Wendy Fung, Assistant Head of Mathematics, said: “The boys had a great afternoon competing with and meeting other keen young mathematicians, but are disappointed not to have progressed further.”

The competition is run jointly by the UK Mathematics Trust and the Further Mathematics Support Programme, a Government-funded initiative. It includes: a group round, which teams have 40 minutes to solve; a crossnumber round, similar to a crossword, and a shuttle round, in which teams compete against the clock to answer questions correctly in a sequence.

Aneesh Chopada, Oliver Robinson, Vigneswaran Thelaxshan and Abhijeet Vakil, all from Year 12, were selected to take part in the competition.

Team captain Vigneswaran said: “It was a challenging and fun afternoon. We really enjoyed the puzzles and the problems.”