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As QE focuses on continuing to deliver a first-class education in the midst of a second national lockdown, news that no fewer than 39 pupils have won offers from Oxford and Cambridge has brought welcome winter cheer to the School.

The figure is second only to last year’s all-time QE record of 40 Oxbridge offers and comes after final-year boys have had to wrestle with months of turmoil and uncertainty because of Covid-19.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Theirs is a truly stellar achievement, achieved in the face of considerable uncertainty and additional challenge. I congratulate these 39 pupils on their hard work and application and I salute my colleagues who have done so much to make possible their success.

“As QE teachers labour tirelessly to maintain a full timetable to our customary standards in a virtual classroom environment, and to ensure that the complex process of university applications proceeds smoothly, this wonderful news is confirmation of the success of those efforts at the very highest levels.”

The places awarded are at a wide range of colleges, from the biggest of all in terms of the number of undergraduates, Trinity at Cambridge, to the much smaller St Benet’s Hall at Oxford. The subjects being studied are varied, too: those chosen include Economics, Engineering, Law, Mathematics, Medicine, Modern & Medieval Languages and Natural Sciences.

Mr Enright was joined by Assistant Head (Pupil Development) Michael Feven and Head of Year 13 Helen Davies for a special celebration with the Oxbridge boys in a video meeting using Microsoft Teams. The group, pictured top, was so big that they could not be fitted on to a single screenshot.

“I happily acknowledge the debt owed by these pupils to their parents and other family members who have supported them, and, in fact, I urged the boys in our video meeting to express their gratitude for this.

“Of course, it is important to recognise that not everyone who applied to Oxford and Cambridge was successful,” Mr Enright added. “A number of outstanding candidates have missed out on offers and will understandably be disappointed.”

“But offers from other sought-after universities are continuing to come in for these and for other boys. Year 13 as a whole are making great progress with their offers and support for them will continue throughout the UCAS process. We hope that everyone will receive an offer from a top-quality institution at which they will thrive and be happy.”

QE has a University admissions Support Programme – or USP – which is supported by many Old Elizabethans, especially through the online QE Connect alumni platform. Special arrangements were made this year with, for example, many old boys conducting online mock interviews for sixth-formers.

Mr Enright thanked the many alumni who have supported current pupils with advice and interviews through the pandemic.

“This year’s leavers will soon be the next entrants to our thriving alumni community, and I trust that they will similarly step up to help out future generations of Elizabethans, giving back to our community.”

Following the cancellation of GCSE, AS and A-level examinations this summer, the exams regulator Ofqual recently published its consultation on how grades should be awarded this year.

The consultation document proposes that pupils continue with their normal education during this academic year and that they are then assessed by their teachers in a period beginning in May and extending into early June.

Ofqual is proposing that exam boards should provide “guidance and training” to help teachers make “objective decisions”. It also suggests that exam boards make available sets of papers for teachers to use with students “as part of their assessment”, arguing that this “would support consistency within and between schools and colleges.” The consultation asks for views on: the proposal to use such papers; the form any such papers should take; whether the papers  could re-use material from past papers; when the papers should be made available, and whether their use should be compulsory.

The consultation document adds: “The teacher, through the marking of the papers, could consider the evidence of the student’s work and use that to inform their assessment of the grade deserved. The exam boards could also sample teachers’ marking as part of the external quality assurance arrangements and to seek to ensure this was comparable across different types of school and college, wherever students are studying. The use of exam board papers could also help with appeals.”

Ofqual is also proposing that teachers should draw on a “range of broader evidence of a student’s work in making their final assessment”.

Teachers would submit grades to the exam boards by mid-June, with external quality assurance by the examination boards taking place throughout the same month.

The results would be issued to pupils once the quality assurance process is complete. This is likely to be in early July.

Any pupils wishing to appeal against their results could do so immediately after receiving them. These appeals would be considered in the first instance by the schools and colleges attended by the pupils, with the appeal to be heard by a “competent person appointed by the school or college, who had not been involved with the original assessment – this could be another teacher in the school or college or a teacher from another school or college.”

A further appeal could then be made to the exam board, but such an appeal would only be allowed be on the grounds that the school involved had not acted in line with the  board’s procedural requirements.

The consultation closes at 11:45pm on 29 January 2021. The consultation document and a facility to respond online to it are available here.

 

Boys are being encouraged to commit to a series of home enrichment New Year’s resolutions over the next six weeks.

With a wealth of suggestions on eQE to choose from, pupils can make the most of their lockdown by filling in the dedicated form with at least four ideas in each of the following categories: ‘expand my creativity’; ‘maintain my physical and mental health’; ‘exercise my mind’ and ‘take responsibility for those around me’.

Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter reports that staff have worked hard to establish online activities for pupils on the eQE home enrichment page, while also creating links to a vast range of other extra-curricular opportunities and ideas. All subject areas on eQE have enrichment pages where boys can access activities such as competitions. In addition, the departments are working to establish remote learning clubs, such as the Sports Journalism Society run by English. Among activities that are lined up for the coming period, or are under way, or have already taken place are:

• A live, open School chess competition run by teacher in charge of chess, Geoff Roberts;
• An online piece of theatre involving the Year 8 cast from the postponed School production and directed by RM Drama’s Gavin Molloy. More details to follow!
• Live Thursday concerts run by the Music department;
• Live English Speaking Union debates against other schools run online by Academic Enrichment Tutor Tom Foster;
• VEX robotics competitions;
• A TedX Live event in July, for which QE has been granted a licence. Sixty boys have already applied to speak. (TEDx is a grassroots initiative modelled on the mission of the free, online TED to circulate ‘ideas worth spreading’).

 

 

As teachers and families grapple with the challenges of a second lockdown, the importance of pastoral care for all QE boys remains undiminished, reports Deputy Head (Pastoral) David Ryan.

“Our aim is to look after the boys and provide the same level of pastoral care that we would were they to be physically on the School site. The focus is very much on ‘here today, looking at tomorrow’ – thinking positively about strategies to deal with the situation at hand, but also looking at the world beyond Covid (as we must!), ensuring that all the boys keep their sights fixed on their future and on learning about the world around them.”

The pastoral sessions held each week amount to more than three hours of contact time with tutors. These allow a range of issues to be discussed, as well as providing the boys with an opportunity to work in a slightly less formal way with their form-mates and have the human contact that is so important at this time, says Mr Ryan.

The sessions set out below make up the three hours:

• Every day, pupils have morning session with form tutors via Microsoft Teams. The tutors thus help to ease boys into their routine, dealing with any issues that arise (such as their wellbeing, or IT problems) and generally getting the day off to a positive start;
• Afternoon sessions are really important, too, adds Mr Ryan. Personal Development Time (PDT) occurs weekly and involves students addressing a range of issues in this half-term;
• Weekly discussion sessions have been taking place. “With all that has been happening in America, there have been lots of live issues to consider, alongside other interesting, and sometimes controversial, topics, such as vaccination priorities or the effects of leaving the EU.”;
• Bespoke tutorials have been taking place since the start of term, allowing tutors to meet boys in smaller groups and to give pupils personalised advice, as well as enabling discussions about ways in which the boys can support each other;
• Peer mentoring has continued as normal, with pupils meeting online, and feedback being forwarded to Heads of Year and form tutors.

If parents have any concerns that they would like to discuss with their son’s form tutor or Head of Year, they should contact [email protected].

Mr Ryan highlighted some of the pastoral activities that have been taking place across the year groups. For Year 7, in recognition of boys’ increased time spent online during lockdown, a remote PDT session on eSafety was brought forward in the programme. Keeping boys safe and healthy has also been to the fore in Year 8, where form tutors have been asked to encourage pupils to engage in extra-curricular activities away from their screens in order to help with their mental health. Many boys have responded, taking part in activities such as exercise, meditation, reading and cooking.

The momentous events taking place across the Atlantic have not gone unnoticed. Year 8 had a PDT lesson on Getting the scoop, teaching pupils how to analyse their online sources of global news, with a focus on the US election. PDT lessons in Year 10 are taking place on democracy, media and the law, and the boys are also enjoying taking part in discussion sessions on topical events such as President Biden’s inauguration and on the interplay between politicians and the media. “There have been some good discussions on whether Twitter was right to ban Trump from using their platform,” says Mr Ryan.

On Mondays, Year 9 boys are discussing their GCSE options and looking at what particular skills are suited to which subject and future careers. This activity is closely linked to the newly introduced Collaborative careers task that the boys are completing. This task is focused on building a variety of skills – teamwork skills, in particular – and requires the boys to devise a way of working together in teams of eight outside lesson time. “It is a unique challenge that has been made possible due to the remote nature of our learning now,” adds Mr Ryan.

The Sixth Form also has its sights set on life after QE: Year 12 had three sessions of remote vertical tutoring from their counterparts in Year 13 to provide them with further support. This has involved using eQE’s forums function, with the Year 12s asking questions about university, and Year 13s who applied for the same degree subjects responding.

In another example of how the School’s investment in IT to facilitate independent learning has paid off, form tutors have reported how they much they have appreciated being able to use the ‘breakout’ function of MS Teams to split the boys into small groups, both to facilitate discussions of particular points by the boys and so that they can more easily catch up with members of the form. “Boys and tutors enjoy interacting with each other in these smaller groups, as they provide an opportunity to see, and speak to, each other more easily,” says Mr Ryan.

Head of Year 7 Tom Harrison pre-recorded one remote assembly, in which he advised Year 7 boys on ways to remain healthy and organised in the current situation, while in Chemistry teacher Tom Batchelor’s Year 7 Leicester form, the form captain and deputy have been creating PowerPoint presentations which they have used to lead weekly quizzes and give news summaries via MS Teams.

 

 

In 1962, Mike Vanderkelen left behind the warm waters of his native Australia to spend a year in Britain’s chillier climes as a QE pupil.

It was a time of great change, both at the School and in wider British society. Timothy Edwards had succeeded veteran Headmaster E H Jenkins only the year before, and during Mike’s stay in Barnet, he experienced both the last great London smog and the dawning of the Swinging Sixties. Here, Mike records his memorable experience.

“One evening midway through 1961, my father had arrived home from his office in Melbourne with a question that would throw wide open the door to my teenage years. As my sister and I hovered around before the family sat down to the evening meal, Father asked did we want to spend a year living in England?

I don’t think I immediately understood what it might mean to live in another country – let alone go to school there – even though we were regular travellers between Melbourne and the island state of Tasmania to see my mother’s family. [Mike sent the postcard with the view of the School shown here to his grandmother in Tasmania.]

Previous generations of my family had been inveterate global travellers, a process that began after my Belgian great-grandfather had come out to Australia for the Great Exhibition of 1880.

But for my father, who had started his own diamond wholesaling business after the Second World War, to pack up the entire family and budget for the travelling and for a much-reduced family income must have taken some confidence and planning. His was a bold decision.

‘I would like to meet the gem suppliers I have been dealing with in Hatton Garden and see London’s diamond trade first-hand,’ he explained.

Moves across the world are now commonplace for many people, including QE alumni wanting to further their experience and their careers. In 1962, my father must have felt confident that the visit – albeit only for a year – would help grow his business.

Making the journey before international air travel had become commonplace, we disembarked at Tilbury after a five-week sea journey from Melbourne. And within days, we had received a letter from Queen Elizabeth’s inviting my enrolment at the School.

A tall and balding Timothy Edwards, who I thought then was the figure of an archetypal headmaster, accepted my enrolment for 1962. I sat silently in his offices with my parents as he briefed them on the School and its history. [Mike is pictured, top, wearing his QE blazer under an apple tree in what had been an orchard at the Manor Road house where his family lived.]

As a recent arrival in the teenager ranks, my time in England would be one of change. Its first manifestation was when I started to become conscious of the fashion statements of the time. I soon convinced a reluctant mother that a pair of jeans and a duffle coat should be part of my wardrobe.

Heading rapidly towards my 14th birthday and newly attired, I soon stepped proudly into the streets of Barnet.

At Monday morning’s classroom roll call, a balding, sports-jacketed and humorous Mr [Rex] Wingfield singled me out for special attention.

“Vanderkelen,” he said in his distinctly Home Counties accent,” I seen you down de ‘igh Street on the weeken’. Did your mum pour you into those jeans or was they painted on?” he asked, to the mirth of class.

Whether or not I responded did not matter. I had been noticed.

However, with one ‘senior’ teacher, Geography master Sam Cocks, I was noticed for the wrong reasons. I thought it a fair assumption that I should do well in a test on Australian geography – but to my horror, instead of 20 out of 20, Sam Cocks told the class I had one incorrect answer.

‘Where did I go wrong,’ I asked him? ‘Well, boy,’ he bellowed, ‘you did not correctly answer the question which asked where in Australia uranium was mined.’

My answer had been Rum Jungle in the Northern Territory, then a centre of uranium mining. But I was quickly told “no boy, that is not the answer in the book.”

If I learned a lesson, it was not one taken from the 1948 Geography textbook laid out on my desk.

If my classroom efforts at QE were mediocre, so too were my efforts at highland dancing in company with young ladies from Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School. Fortunately, these activities were overshadowed by some prowess in the then-open air School swimming pool and on the cricket field. With a fellow ‘colonial’, Chris Aldons from Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), we showed our hosts what warm colonial water did for one’s swimming skills. But we kept hush about any thoughts we may have had about our Ashes-like prowess.

Living in High Barnet we were closer to a more rural England than the metropolis to the south. A short distance from our flat were the lanes and hedgerows that led to the QE rugby fields and, beyond them, a horse-riding school. Equally close was Jack’s Lake in Hadley Wood. The proximity of fields for horse-riding and a lake for fishing were to foster two pastimes I would enjoy on my return to Australia.

Given my ongoing enjoyment of music and an interest in social history, I have always thought that I was in the right place at the right time in 1962. After all, I got advance notice of the musical tsunami that was about to sweep the western world with the arrival of The Beatles, The Stones, The Hollies, The Animals and a myriad of others.  But during my year in Barnet, my ears and eyes were also opened to an earlier era of ‘popular’ music.

It was no doubt at my parents’ recommendation that I walked up to Wood Street, Barnet, and asked for the autograph of someone whose recording career would outlast many of those who made their names in the 1960s and beyond: Dame Vera Lynn was still making the music charts well into her 90s.

As a sheepish 14-year-old kid in a black duffle coat, my photo appeared in the local paper asking for Vera’s autograph. This was one famous lady who was more than a singer. In many ways she had been idolised in Britain for her contribution to war time morale of both service personnel and the public.

And about the same time as I was adding Ms Lynn’s autograph to my book, I was also attending the QE Christmas concert.

Just before our year in the UK was to end, the greater London area suffered its last great smog before clean air legislation and the reduction in the use of coal fires had their full effect.

A wintry outbreak brought snow to the country in mid-December. In the days before the snow began to fall and the roads to ice up, I recall seeing a yellow-ish smog seep in under the front door of our flat in Manor Road.

Opening the door, I could hear the London Transport bus as its diesel engine laboured up the hill outside the house. Peering through the smog as the noise got louder, all I could see was the faint glow of the light on the upper deck as the bus passed by on its way to Barnet town centre.

Parts of southern England had heavy snow on Boxing Day. Barnet and surrounding district was in the grip of the freeze. It was indeed big news just four days before we were to embark at Tilbury for the journey home.

So almost 60 years on, I am now able to answer the question about what it would be like to live overseas and what the QE School experience did for me.

Was QE an élite institution, as several private schools in Australia aspired to be, modelling themselves on well-known English public schools? No, on reflection and despite its long history, QE appeared to be democratic and up to date, remembering, however, that this was a time when there was a real distance between pupil and teacher. It was a distance that I tried to bridge just seven years later when I spent a year teaching at a secondary school in Melbourne.

Vague whispers in the QE corridors that I had come from The Colonies were less concerning than arriving into a class half way through the School year. I was soon to find my classmates were ahead of me in several subjects.

Since school is as much about socialising as it is about academic achievement, I began to fit in. I then continued exchanging letters (remember them?) with former classmates until the late 1960s. Our opinions about the latest releases across several musical genres were an important regular topic.

Apart from this mutual passion for music detailed in every letter, my most regular correspondent Geoff made references to the cricketing fortunes of our respective nations, wrote that the School pool would eventually be covered, that there was an Australian was on the QE staff teaching Latin and the UK was contemplating entering the Common Market.

But as tertiary studies, careers, relationships, sporting and cultural interests on either side of the world diluted our memories of QE, the exchange of letters ended.

Before we embarked for England an unnamed friend or family member – I never found out who –had recommended that my sister and I be sent to boarding schools in Australia for the year while my parents made the trip.

My father, an insightful man, said: ‘No, the experience, including school, will broaden their education.’

And, you know, I think he was right.”

• After returning to Australia Mike obtained an arts degree from Melbourne University and a commission in the Australian Artillery Reserve. In 1971 he secured a position as a journalist on the small team which launched the first business newspaper in Australia to serve the computer and information industries. This foundation paved the way for him to launch a B2B consultancy providing advice and services to global technology companies, including names such as Hewlett Packard and SAP and numerous Australasian software and hardware providers over more than 40 years. During his career he lived and worked in Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland, before returning to his home state of Victoria. Today he lives in its second biggest city, Geelong, and thinks the concept of ‘retirement’ is an onerous one, so remains busy helping build and restore wooden boats in a local community group, cultivating a large vegetable garden, enjoying food and wine (from the Geelong region’s many fine vineyards) and music. He also likes to get away to Tasmania’s central highland lakes to fly-fish for trout.