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After pupils and staff put their back into weeks of work at the new QE allotment, the School has been given the RHS School Gardening Award Level 1.

The QE plot at the Byng Road community allotments is already planted up with potatoes, strawberries and asparagus.

The School chose today to announce its receipt of the award because it is internationally recognised as Earth Day – a day dedicated to raising environmental awareness and encouraging sustainability.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Our new School plan, Boundless, has as one of its six priorities that we will help our pupils become ‘sustainability-literate’: what better example of that could there be than this gardening project?

“It is good to see that our allotment has so quickly become a vibrant hub of learning, teamwork, and environmental action.”

Among those enthusiastically backing the project is Year 13’s Shailen Patel, who has contributed the grant he won as part of a Jack Petchey Foundation Environmental Award.

Others, both inside and outside the School, have variously donated time, tools, materials and encouragement.

The work has involved much preparation of the ground. The first rewards of all this labour have already come with the emergence of the first asparagus spears.

The RHS  level 1 award recognises: that those involved understand the benefits of gardening; that the growing space is accessible for those with disabilities; and that the gardening work has actually started. Recipients are sent a copy of Your Wellbeing Garden, an RHS book, and a packet of seeds.

Earth Day, which this year has the theme of Our Power, Our Planet, is concentrating on collective, citizen-led actions to drive environmental change.

Earth Day marks the climax of Earth Month, which is celebrated every April.

Well over 400 pupils performed in the Leavers’ Concert, with many from the lower years turning out to support the musicians of Year 13.

The Class of 2026 have made a significant impact on music at QE. To name just three of their number – and there are many similar examples – Leo Sellis and Ryuki Watanabe form the backbone of several ensembles, which they encourage to take on more complex repertoire, while accomplished accompanist Colin Copcea provides essential support at rehearsals and performances.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This was an outstanding concert, celebrating senior musicians who have contributed greatly to our supportive QE music community and thus have played a part in developing the confidence, skills and enjoyment of other pupils.”

The Leavers’ Concert was played to a sell-out audience in the Shearly Hall. It began, appropriately enough, with The Final Countdown by Europe, played by a specially formed Year 13 ensemble.

The remainder of the programme featured genres ranging from jazz to rock, from film music to ragtime (Scott Joplin’s Bethena Waltz, performed by the Junior Strings). Many of the ensembles were directed by Sixth Form musicians.

The end of the first half saw the School Orchestra take their places to perform, firstly, selections from Grieg’s Peer Gynt (together with the Senior Strings ensemble), and then pieces by Prokofiev and Debussy.

After enjoying interval refreshments served in the Dining Hall, the audience returned to hear the second half get under way with the Indian Ensemble performing works from both south and north India.

Towards the conclusion of the programme, the Headmaster stepped forward to present Music colours, with Mathematics teacher Navjeet Swatch, QE’s ‘resident’ tuba player, honoured alongside pupils.

The boys themselves offered their heartfelt thanks to Music teachers Caroline Grint and Jas Hutchinson-Bazely, and to Head of Department Ruth Partington, who joined QE as Director of Music on the same day they started in Year 7 in September 2019.

A grand finale saw the School Choir and Orchestra massing to perform excerpts from Les Misérables.

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Queen Elizabeth’s enters the record books this term as the first school ever to have two teams in the 30-team national final of the English Schools Chess Championship.

The seeds of this remarkable double success were sown back in the Autumn Term, when Team A took first place in the regional qualifier at St Albans School, with Team B the runners-up.

They then won their coveted places at June’s University of Nottingham final with a string of victories over some familiar but tough rivals in the zonal stages.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It’s been an exhilarating year for our chess players, who deserve great praise for playing so well in the regional and zonal rounds, and for putting QE firmly in the spotlight with their double qualification for the national final. What a fantastic achievement! We wish them all well in Nottingham.”

In the zonal stages, QE’s B team went first. After seeing off North London Collegiate School convincingly by 11.5 points to 0.5, they progressed to an away semi-final against Harrow. It was a tougher and tenser challenge, which came down to the last of the six games. This was duly won, giving QE a 4-2 victory.

Merchant Taylors’ had beaten Haberdashers’ in the other semi-final, thus deciding Team B’s opponents in the zonal final. Crucial early points were secured on boards 5 and 6, and although the rest of their points came much later, the B team secured their place in the national final, beating Merchant Taylors’ by a three-point margin, winning 4.5–1.5.

As for the A team, they did things in style, winning all 24 of their individual zonal games! After first wiping out Bishop Douglass School 12-0 and Dame Alice Owen’s 6-0, they took on Haberdashers’ Boys’ the week after the B team’s zonal final triumph. They duly trounced Habs 6-0 in their own zonal final to claim their place at Nottingham among the other zonal final winners.

Teacher in charge of chess Geoff Roberts hailed the boys’ history-making feat. He added: “While the old format may possibly have seen schools with teams in both the main and plate national final competitions, no school has ever had two teams qualify since the English Chess Federation moved to the straightforward 30-team format a decade or so ago,” he said.

The QE teams comprise boys from Year 7 all the way through to Year 13.

Team A
Advait Keerthi Kumar, Year 8
Aayush Dewangan, Year 10
Rohan Katkar, Year 11
Rithwik Gururaj, Year 12
Nishchal Thatte, Year 12
Daiwik Solanki, Year 13

Team B
Gautam Sriram, Year 7
Hubert Bates, Year 8
Djad Ben-Eshak, Year 8
Kian Aggarwal, Year 10
Bharath Jayakumar, Year 10
Akshaj Khandelwal, Year 10
Shlok Parakh, Year 10
Ashwin Ravithas, Year 10

Two visiting artists helped QE pupils take a fresh look at familiar spaces through a project that embraced a variety of materials and techniques and got them out and about in the School grounds.

This story has been published to coincide with World Art Day – celebrated annually on 15th April. #WorldArtDay

The Year 8 project, entitled Traces, Places & Possible Futures — A Multispecies City, asked pupils to consider who and what lives alongside them, including plants, insects and other animals, and microbes.

Professional artists Abigail Hunt and Sum-Sum (Ngan-Sum) Tse-Cappi led three workshops, before the project culminated in a public exhibition of the boys’ work – and of pupils from Barnet’s Northway School and Chalgrove Primary School – at the Apthorp Gallery in North Finchley’s ArtsDepot.

Head of Art Craig Wheatley said: “This was an interactive and imaginative series of workshops, which celebrated students’ creativity and collaborative learning, while the exhibition amplified young people’s voices in conversations about future environments.”

Organised by the Art Department in collaboration with ArtsDepot, the project involved photography, construction and the use of clay and plaster during the workshops. The boys were encouraged to explore the spaces they live, learn and play in – and then reimagine them through sculpture, mapping, and collaborative making.

Through creative exploration the boys were encouraged to reflect on responsibility, care and respect for other species, and to imagine future environments that support coexistence. As well as living creatures, the project considered weather systems.

Across the linked workshops, pupils engaged with a process of observation, interpretation and construction, working with drawing, photography, casting and collage.

In Workshop 1, pupils explored their immediate environment through a multispecies lens. By exploring the area around the School, pupils were encouraged to record traces made by fauna and flora. They documented their findings through drawings, photographs, rubbings and clay moulds, which are developed into plaster tiles. Discussions introduce multispecies mapping, highlighting human routes alongside animal paths, insect highways and plant borders.

Workshop 2 focused on interpretation and design. Pupils collaborated on large-scale maps of the School and outdoor spaces, identifying how both humans and non-humans use these areas. They imagined themselves as other species, asking what those beings might need to thrive. Photographs from the first workshop were transformed into collage habitats, and pupils exchanged ‘creature postcards’ with the other participating schools, sharing design ideas.

In Workshop 3, pupils started to create ideas for building sculptural ecosystems and prototype habitats using found materials. Through these imaginative structures, they explored shelter, movement and connection for different species. Conversations around sustainability, impermanence and life cycles encouraged the boys to think critically about different environments, and to create environments to support real multispecies life. Pupils documented their work through photography and recorded stories, contributing to the final exhibition.

• Click on the thumbnails below to view the images.

Internationally respected economist Dr Sandeep Mazumder has been formally inaugurated as the ninth President of Georgia’s Berry College.

Sandeep (OE 1993–2000), who frequently gives his time online to support Economics at QE, was welcomed by representatives of the college’s Board of Trustees, by faculty, by current students, and by alumni in a special ceremony.

Roger Lusby, Vice Chair of the college’s Board of Trustees, formally invested him by presenting him with the presidential medallion.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My heartfelt congratulations go to Sandeep on his inauguration: he is a good friend to QE, and I know that all here will wish him well in his distinguished new role.”

Also paying tribute was QE Governor Eric Houston, a teacher at the School from 1976 who was Second Master when he retired in 2010. After watching the livestream of the ceremony, he wrote to Sandeep: “The abiding memory for me will always be that of your happiness as you stood and acknowledged the warm and genuine applause from the audience at the end…I am certain that you will use your considerable ability, drive and energy to move the college forward, and so bring many benefits to the students and staff working there now and in the future.”

Berry College, a private university near Rome, Georgia, is named after educationalist Martha Berry, who in 1902 founded a boys’ industrial school, before going on to form a girls’ school and college. The trustees unanimously elected Sandeep to be the college’s president.

After studying at Cambridge, Sandeep moved to the US to complete his PhD at Johns Hopkins University. He served as an Economics Professor and Chair of the Economics Department at Wake Forest University and then as Dean of the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University in Texas. He took up the post at Berry College in July last year.

Before giving his inaugural address, he was introduced at the ceremony by Derek Radney, pastor of Trinity Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He has been a friend of Sandeep’s for over 15 years, and Sandeep is a former member of his church.

“I could tell you many things about how great he is, but instead I want to share with you what has always impressed me about him, and that’s his humility,” Mr Radney said. “…In a day and age when apologies might mean that you’re going to be cancelled, or when many leaders believe that you should never admit wrong if you want to be successful, Dr Mazumder has always been willing to apologise, to tell the truth about himself, and to take responsibility. …Because of his confidence in the forgiveness and acceptance of God through Jesus Christ, Sandeep has been willing to humbly embrace the weakness of repentance without fear or shame, enabling him to grow into into a person capable of greater love, freedom, and power for service.”

Sandeep concluded his inaugural address with these words: “Let us walk together in a way that is worthy of our calling. And I look forward to taking that journey with you all. Thank you for joining me on this special day, and may God continue to bless the pursuits of Berry College.”

During the ceremony, representatives of various parts of the college and wider community gave their own tributes to Sandeep.

Among them was Dr Laurence Ball, Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins, representing higher education. He was the primary advisor for Sandeep’s doctoral dissertation, completed in 2009. The two have gone on to co-author several publications, and Dr Ball lauded the quality of Sandeep’s research.

John Parker, Berry College Faculty member in the Department of Religion and Philosophy and a Faculty Assembly officer, said: “We are very glad that your path from London and Cambridge to Baltimore and Waco has at last led you here to Mount Berry. We stand confident in your character and skills to lead us into the future, and we wish you every success as you help us.”