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Under its pioneering Global Schools initiative, QE Barnet has successfully opened new schools in India and UAE – the first to bear the proud Queen Elizabeth’s name overseas.

Queen Elizabeth’s School, Gurugram, and Queen Elizabeth’s School, Dubai Sports City, welcomed their founding families in colourful, joy-filled ceremonies.

Pupils explored their new schools, met their classmates, and received the warmest of welcomes: from teachers and other staff; from leaders of QE’s partner organisation, Global Education (GEDU) – and even from a couple of robots!

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This is a tremendously significant milestone for QE Global Schools – the first time that a UK state school has ever opened affiliate schools abroad.

“I welcome and thank all the parents in Gurugram and Dubai who have entrusted us with providing a first-class, modern education for their children rooted in the mission, ethos and traditions of QE Barnet.

“I also offer my sincere congratulations to my colleagues both here and in Dubai and India: it is very exciting to see their hard work and preparations over many months coming to fruition.

“At a stroke, these openings create a new, worldwide family of QE schools. In the years to come, we look forward to many exciting collaborative, educational and networking opportunities for current pupils, alumni and staff alike.”

The two new schools are both fee-paying, co-educational schools open to children of nursery age onwards. They will eventually educate pupils up to and including Year 13. QE Gurugram will offer boarding, in addition to day places.

QE, Dubai Sports City, welcomed more than 500 pupils and staff for the start of the 2026–2027 academic year. Families joined together in the Founding Families’ Hub, where Arabic calligraphy, a majlis (a special gathering), and time together over coffee created a welcoming start to the morning. Across the campus, students explored their new surroundings with their QE Passports, visiting classrooms, sports facilities and the e-sports lab, before coming together for their first assemblies and team-building activities. The day also brought some memorable surprises, with a humanoid robot greeting families on arrival and a robot dog delivering House invitations to students as they discovered their House colours for the first time.

Dan Clark, Founding Principal of QE, Dubai Sports City, said: “The opening marked the beginning of an exciting journey, and we were delighted to welcome our founding students, families and staff.

“From the outset, our ambition has been to provide an outstanding academic education, framed around a simple mission: to nurture confident, able and responsible young men and women. This will be achieved by translating the deep culture of scholarship, the focus on character and the commitment to belonging that are the hallmarks of Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet.

“We are excited for our students to experience our exceptionally broad offering, enhanced through unique partnerships in sport, creative arts, innovation and entrepreneurship. Each Elizabethan will have the opportunity to discover their strengths, develop their confidence and feel a genuine sense of belonging through our tailored signature programmes,” Mr Clark added.

At QE Gurugram, the inaugural cohort of students and their families were welcomed by the school leadership and introduced to the school’s vision and values through a special assembly and Bell Ceremony. The day included a Tree-Planting Ceremony, symbolising the beginning of a new community taking root in Gurugram, while families were invited to sign the school’s Legacy Book as part of its founding history. Gurugram, also known as Gurgaon, is a major satellite city of Delhi.

Dr Craig Cook, Founding Principal of QE Gurugram, said: “These children will always be the first chapter of Queen Elizabeth’s School in Gurugram. We want them to feel that this is a school where they are known, valued and challenged to discover what they can achieve. Academic excellence is important, but so are confidence, curiosity, relationships, creativity and character. Our responsibility is to give every child the opportunity to flourish.”

Caroline Pendleton-Nash, CEO of Queen Elizabeth’s Global Schools, said: “For our founding students, the year ahead will be filled with firsts: lessons, friendships, teams, competitions, celebrations and traditions. These are the moments that will begin to define our schools and, in years to come, become part of their history. There is something incredibly special about being part of a founding community. Our students and families will not simply join the story of Queen Elizabeth’s Global Schools; they will help shape it.”

Mr Enright and his senior staff in Barnet are playing a key role in shaping and guiding the new schools to ensure that they reflect the name and reputation of Queen Elizabeth’s School. For its part, GEDU – a hugely experienced organisation already educating 60,000 students across 12 countries – is shouldering much of the administrative burden of managing the new schools. Revenues from the initiative received by FQE International Enterprises will be invested into further improving educational opportunities at QE Barnet.

Click on the gallery of images below for more. You can see a short video from the opening of QE Dubai Sports City here.

The School today announced its best-ever GCSE results, with record-breaking figures recorded across all the top grades.

More than two-thirds of all GCSEs (68%) were awarded level 9 – the highest possible grade – while over 87% were at levels 9-8 and 97% at levels 9–7 (equivalent to the old A*–A grades).

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “These are phenomenal results by any standards, with truly excellent performances across the curriculum. They reflect both the talent of our pupils and all the hard work they have put in during lessons and in their studies at home.

“My congratulations go to the boys, to my colleagues who have taught and inspired them, and to their supportive families.

“Just like the fantastic A-level outcomes we announced last week, when we topped the national league table published in The Times, these GCSE results are underpinned by the meticulously developed programmes and initiatives that we call QE Essentials.”

The Essentials include: free-thinking scholarship, bespoke pastoral care, the QE Flourish co-curricular programme, QE Futures (for higher education and careers preparation), the QE Connect alumni community (providing support and inspiration) and a considered Digital Strategy.

“The examination results are evidence once again that all our pupils thrive and achieve highly, benefitting from personal guidance and an individually tailored approach: we recognise that there really is no such thing as a ‘typical’ QE boy,” said Mr Enright.

“These Year 11s are also direct beneficiaries of our Digital Strategy, being the first year-group to sit public exams who have been part of our 1:1 programme – which involves boys making use of identical laptops in a carefully integrated and planned way for some lessons, homework, and independent study tasks. At the same time, classrooms buzz with discussion and debate, with oracy another key strand of our educational philosophy.”

While results were very strong across the board, there were notable performances in Mathematics where more than 90% of boys were awarded a level 9, and in Biology in which all grades were at either level 9 (92.4%) or level 8 (7.6%).

Year 13 pupils have produced a truly outstanding set of A-level results, with a remarkable 62% of their exams awarded A* grades and with rises achieved against all key benchmarks.

The A* figure is up 8.7% on 2025’s results and second only to the results recorded at QE in 2022, when outcomes were moderated nationally to avoid abrupt drops in grades following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Some 98% of grades were at A*–B, making 2026 the 21st consecutive year in which this important measure has exceeded 95%. The results thus further cement QE’s place as one of the country’s leading academic schools across both the state and independent sectors.

With 59 boys – a third of the year group – achieving straight A* grades, there are scores of individual success stories, as students secure the grades they need to confirm places at Oxford, Cambridge and other world-leading universities, including Harvard.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This is a day of great celebration at Queen’s Road! My heartfelt congratulations go to my colleagues, our supportive parents and families, and, of course, most of all to the leavers, whose hard work and application have paid off in such spectacular fashion. They now leave us for places on hugely competitive degree courses at exciting university destinations.

“Year 13 are an impressive cohort – and not just in terms of their determination and academic talent. They are great company, full of humour and mutually supportive, while displaying commendable curiosity and maturity. I am certain that these young men are ready to sally forth into the next chapters of their lives and careers and make a telling contribution to society.

“Important though examination results are, the QE experience is much broader than that. All our leavers have played their part in the School’s accomplishments beyond the classroom, which this year have included winning the English Schools Chess Championships, reaching the last four of the new national Knight-Stokes Cup in cricket, placing third at the World Economics Cup and winning divisional awards at the VEX World Robotics Championships in the US.”

Highlights of the A-level results include:

• 89% of exams being awarded A* or A – a 2.5% increase on 2025
• 84 pupils gaining at least three A* grades (the 59 achieving straight A*s and a further 25 securing three A*s and an A)
• An additional 31 A*s in the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), representing 69% of pupils taking one this year.

In line with QE’s emphasis on free-thinking scholarship, the EPQ candidates pursued their own academic interests, tackling topics such as How effective can different Artificial Intelligence models be in the discovery, prediction, prevention and management of disease? and To what extent has neoliberal economic policy contributed to divergent long-term economic growth and stability outcomes in Chile and Argentina?

Danyal Talha confirming his Harvard place is among a number of notable performances, which include at least 41 places secured at Oxbridge and seven confirmed places in Dentistry at King’s College London. Adithya Raghuraman achieved four A*s and secured his place to read Mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford. He is an Ellison Scholarship holder, which provides a full scholarship for study at Oxford and is given to only around 20 students worldwide each year. Two more Maths stars, Sasen Kankanamge Don and William Joanes, each earned a pair of the top (S) grades in the fearsome University of Cambridge Sixth Term Examination Paper (STEP) admissions test.  They will be going to Queens’ College and Trinity College respectively. And two other Cambridge-bound leavers have secured Choral Scholarships: Leo Sellis will be reading Music at Jesus College, while Adam Liang will study Economics at Gonville & Caius.

Nearly two-thirds of those who now have confirmed offers are going to universities ranked in the QS World Top 10, while 95% of all QE’s confirmed places are at Russell Group universities.

The Oxbridge candidates will be taking courses that range from Philosophy & German and Psychology & Behavioural Sciences to Maths & Philosophy. The most popular courses chosen by QE leavers overall include Economics, Medicine, Maths, Engineering and Dentistry.

New drone footage reveals the School’s historic Main Building looking magnificent following the removal of scaffolding.

The building, opened in 1932 when the School moved from Tudor Hall on Wood Street, is currently undergoing its biggest overhaul since the 1950s.

The £2.3m project was recently paused to avoid noise during A-level and GCSE examinations, but work is now set to start again and should be completed over the summer holidays.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It’s wonderful to see the roof of the Main Building looking so smart after the replacement of 130,000 tiles, to admire our newly restored cupola, and to have a bird’s-eye view of all the solar panels that have been fitted.”

The School this week welcomed the new intake of Year 7 pupils for an induction day. By the time they start in September, not only will the Main Building project be complete, so will a number of other campus improvements, including:

• Phase I of a two-summer project to completely refurbish the Biology department, including all the laboratories
• Installation of air-conditioning across the teaching spaces in the very large Fern Building
• External works to the Fern Building and Shearly Hall.

The principal scaffolding around the Main Building was removed during the recent half-term holiday.

Main Building combines classic 1930s features – such as the iconic bottle-green glazed tiles that still adorn the classrooms and corridors – with a homage to QE’s Tudor roots through its brick and stone masonry, and oak panelling. It was extended with new wings as the School continued to grow in the 1950s.

The project includes the replacement of ten flat roofs, work on the brick and stone (including re-pointing), rectifying mould on internal walls, replacement of rainwater goods (drainpipes etc.), and the redecoration of around 50 classrooms and other rooms. There is also a raft of environmental measures, including the fitting of modern insulation, as well as the installation of the solar panels on the south-facing pitched roof towards the rear. The few remaining original windows will be replaced with double-glazed units specially produced to be in keeping with the building. The work included specialist restoration of the copper-and-wood central cupola (tower).

After the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s charity committed some £0.3m, the School bid successfully for £2m in Government Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) grants to fund the work.

“All of the above, including the Main Building project, would be impossible without support from The Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s: I am immensely grateful to all the parents and others in our Elizabethan community who contribute so generously and so consistently,” said Mr Enright.

The drone footage may also be viewed here.

From the opening classical march through to the quirky bounce of Baggy Trousers by Madness, the Junior Recital encompassed an impressive range of solo and chamber performances.

There was even a notable milestone for the Music department – the first pupil bassoon performance in the Friends’ Recital Hall since its opening in 2022.

Assistant Director of Music Caroline Grint says the event’s young participants, drawn from Years 7–10, left no one in any doubt as to their ability:  “The word ‘Junior’ in our Junior Recital certainly did not reflect the exceptional standard on display.”

The concert provides younger musicians with the opportunity to perform in a formal setting before an audience of family and friends.

The evening began with a “spirited” performance of Schubert’s Marche Militaire for eight hands by the Piano Quartet and concluded with an “outstanding” rendition of the first movement of John Ireland’s Sonata in G minor by Year 10’s Eshaan Anil, Miss Grint says.

“Other memorable performances included Year 7 pupil Adrian Tai’s commanding interpretation of Poulenc’s Toccata and the Junior Saxophone Quartet’s lively and characterful rendition of Baggy Trousers.”

The first bassoon performance was the Double Reed Trio’s presentation of Trio No. 1 by Ludvík Milde, a 19th-century Czech composer known primarily for his bassoon works. The trio comprised bassoonists Yuvraj Shah and Devansh Nath, of Years 9 and 7 respectively, and oboist Hasan Moochhala, of Year 9. Its name reflects the fact that bassoons and oboes, together with English horn (cor anglais) and contrabassoon, use two pieces of cane tied together.

“This ensemble was newly formed this year to give more support to our up-and-coming young bassoonists, so it was delightful to see them take their first steps as an ensemble in front of an audience in our recital hall, Miss Grint adds.

“The concert highlighted the depth of musical talent emerging through the School, and every performer should be immensely proud of the dedication and hard work that went into preparing such a successful event.”

“Alongside the musical achievements, it was wonderful to see the encouragement, camaraderie and mutual support shared amongst all the performers throughout the evening.”