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Years 11,12 and 13 made three visits to the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

The Institute is a leading player in the Human Genome Project. Boys attended lectures on the causes of bubonic plague and the role of mutations in gene expression, as well as taking tours around the facility.

QE have won the regional round of the Royal Society of Chemistry Top of The Bench Competition for the first time and will take part in the National Final at Imperial College.

After being prepared over the last half-term by their teacher, Elizabeth Kuo, the School’s team saw off competition from several high-achieving schools at the Chilterns and Middlesex round, held at St Benedict’s School, Ealing. QE has been entering the competition for 10 years and its previous best place was fourth.

“We will now take part in the National Final in April and will start preparing for this in January by undertaking extra practical work with the team,” said Dr Kuo.

The team comprises: Mehul Jesani ,Year 11; Aniruddh Raghu, Year 10; Allessandro Zanre and Tianlin Zhang, both of Year 9.

Nineteen Year 10 boys have been running their own registered business, Retrocycle Records, as part of the Young Enterprise competition.

Their coasters, made out of recycled centres of old vinyl records, are going on sale in the School Shop. The boys also hope to sell to local markets in the New Year.

It may feel cold in Barnet at the moment, but it’s just a light chill compared with the temperatures experienced by penguins!

Year 7 and 8 boys in QE’s Geoexplorers club have been finding out about the Antarctic birds and how they cope with winter temperatures that average -40C to -70C.

Geography teacher Tessa Roberts said "Boys learned how these ‘cool creatures’ have special feathers and feet to adapt to the extreme cold. They made models of penguins from recycled egg boxes and then surrounded them with flags representing member countries of the Antarctic Treaty.”

The club, which meets every Friday lunchtime, has also run two quizzes this term. More than 50 boys took part in teams in the London Underground Challenge, while a second quiz, How well do you know QE? focused on matters even closer to home.

Next term, the club will be looking at the Geography of art and doing some landscape drawings.

Every Year 7 boy had the opportunity to receive a free book of his choice as part of a national project aiming to foster a love of reading. Now the Booked Up scheme at QE has been hailed as a great success by English teacher Chloe Orchin.

Launched in 2007 and run by the Booktrust independent charity, Booked Up is supported by children’s publishers and part-funded by the Department for Education.

All QE Year 7 pupils were given the opportunity to view a DVD highlighting a range of new titles aimed at their age group. The film included footage of the author presenting his or her book, as well as reviews by pupils from across the UK.

Each boy was then asked to select the book which appealed to him most, and the eagerly anticipated books were sent a few weeks later.

“The English Department were keen for our youngest pupils to be involved in the scheme, not only because it complements our own lower school ‘private reading’ programme, but also because we recognise the importance of encouraging and promoting a love of reading to a generation in which this essential practice is increasingly and dramatically falling,” said Miss Orchin.

The books chosen ranged from factual texts to graphic novels. The boys were encouraged to read, debate, review and swap their books so as to benefit fully from the shared literary experience which the scheme offered.

Among the beneficiaries was Abhishek Srivastava, who said: “Booked Up was brilliant – I can’t believe that we got to choose a book for ourselves for free! I chose The Invisible City by M G Harris. It’s exciting and mysterious.”

“All in all, Booked Up was a huge success,” Miss Orchin added. “From a teaching perspective, it was so encouraging to see the boys becoming so enthusiastic, entertained and genuinely excited by what they were reading. I certainly look forward to seeing the results of this in their lives and learning as the year progresses.”