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Boys from across QE staged an online talent show to raise funds for the nearby Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice – the School’s main chosen charity of the year.

Pupils of every age, from Year 7 to the Sixth Form, were given two weeks to prepare their acts and then submit recordings to the School. More than 20 boys took part, coming up with a huge variety of acts, from comedy and card tricks to a Shakespearean recitation and classical music performances.

Their video and audio clips were then edited together by Aryan Saraf, now of Year 12, and published – for a short period only – on YouTube after being launched as a YouTube Premiere.

Boys and their families were also invited to donate online to Noah’s Ark, whose funding has suffered badly during the coronavirus crisis as normal fundraising events have been cancelled. They quickly raised £120, and donations have continued to flow in since.

Noah’s Ark helps seriously unwell children and their families make the most of the time they have together. The majority of the babies and children it supports are unlikely to reach their 18th birthday.

Rebecca Grundy, QE’s Head of Extra-curricular Enrichment, paid tribute to Aryan, to all the contributors, and especially to Charity Vice-Captains (prefects), Rukshaan Selvendira and Janujan Satchi. “Rukshaan and Janujan did a great job of organising it, and their efforts were amply rewarded when boys from all years of the School contributed an amazingly varied set of acts, displaying some great skills and (in some cases) previously hidden talents.”

Extra-Curricular Enrichment Tutor Micah King added: “We were delighted to be able to play our part in helping Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice at this particularly difficult time.

“The hospice is, after all, not only a very worthy cause, but also a neighbour – you can see its new building, The Ark, from the rugby pitches on our back field.”

Rukshaan was himself among the contributors, submitting a colourful audio-visual display, featuring electronic music, entitled Prospect.

The musical elements of the programme also featured speed tabla-playing by Isher Jagdev, the performance of an original song by guitarist Aadarsh Khimasia (pictured top), and other performances on instruments including the piano, guitar and drums, while Arjun Patel sang Brahm’s Wiegenlied (Lullaby).

There was magic, including the card tricks, and mind-reading, too. The current Year 8 was particularly strongly represented, with, for example, Ryuki Watanabe giving an Easy origami tutorial, Vedh Shashi telling jokes, and William Joanes donning theatrical costume to recite passages from Macbeth, directly from his kitchen.

Afterwards, one anonymous donor wrote on the Noah’s Ark website: “I wish the children in your care well and thank you for supporting them and their families. Their bravery inspires the boys at QE incredibly.”

Further donations may be made here.

Three QE boys scored 135 out of 135 in the 2020 Junior Mathematical Challenge, as the School recorded an exceptional number of strong performances in the annual competition.

Hisham Khan, now of Year 8, and current Year 9 boys Jothusan Jeevakaran and Saim Kahn were among 117 QE pupils to be awarded gold certificates in the national challenge, which this year was held online only and entered by pupils from home.

All 384 boys in Year 7 and 8 were invited to take part earlier in the year, and 318 of them – 83% – won either a gold, silver or bronze certificate, even though such certificates are given nationally to only the top 40% of entrants, to whom gold, silver and bronze are awarded in the ratio 1:2:3.

Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung said: “It was another very good performance this year, showing the strength in depth of Mathematics in the lower years at the School. My congratulations go especially to Hisham, Jothusan and Saim for their outstanding achievement.

“Much of the success achieved by our youngest boys in the challenge stems from the excellent guidance and help given to Year 8 by the Years 10 and 11 mentors at our Élite Maths (Junior) group: we are very grateful to them for giving up their time and passing on their wisdom.”

To win gold certificates this year, entrants had to score more than 102 points; for silver, the threshold was 86, and for bronze, 70.

The annual event is run by the UK Mathematics Trust. The usual follow-on rounds for successful entrants – the Junior Olympiad and Junior Kangaroo – are not taking place this year.

Here are two sample questions from this year’s Junior Mathematical Challenge – answers and explanations below.

1. The mean of four positive integers is 5. The median of the four integers is 6. What is the mean of the largest and smallest of the integers?

A 3   B 4   C 5   D 6   E 8

2. A group of 42 children all play tennis or football, or both sports. The same number play tennis as play just football. Twice as many play both tennis and football as play just tennis. How many of the children play football?

A 7   B 14   C 21   D 28   E 35

Solutions & explanations

1. The mean of four positive integers is 5. Therefore. the sum of the four integers is 4 × 5 = 20. The median of the integers is the mean of the two middle integers. Since this median is 6, the sum of the two middle integers is 2 × 6 = 12. Hence the sum of the smallest and largest of the four integers is 20 − 12 = 8. Therefore, the mean of the largest and smallest of the integers is 8 ÷ 2 = 4.

2. Let the number of children who play only football be f, the number of children who play only tennis be t and the number of children who play both sports be b. Since there are 42 children, f + t + b = 42. Also, since the number of children who play tennis is equal to the number of children who play only football, t + b = f . Therefore f + f = 42. So f = 21 and t + b = 21. Finally, twice as many play both tennis and football as play just tennis. Therefore b = 2t. Substituting for b, gives t + 2t = 21. Hence t = 7. Therefore, the number of children who play football is 42 − t = 42 − 7 = 35.

A Year 10 team’s hi-tech lockdown project was placed third in an international competition aimed at stemming the global tide of plastic pollution.

The Prata Neptunia team combined their skills in Technology, Mathematics and Chemistry and also produced a slick video presentation to promote their design for an autonomous hovercraft robot.

Competing against teams from more than 40 countries, Ashwin Sridhar, Anish Rana and Merwan Singh impressed judges from the British International Education Association with their use of artificial intelligence to tackle plastic waste in rivers and canals, reducing its harmful effects on flora and fauna.

A second QE Year 10 team, called Ocean, won the Best Effort prize in their category in the competition, which was launched in January.

Head of Technology Michael Noonan said: “My heartfelt congratulations go to the boys, who began their projects when we were deep in lockdown and thus had to overcome some significant obstacles in putting their entry together. Although narrowly missing out on the grand prize, the team are proud to have had their project acknowledged on an international scale and to have learned countless new skills along the way.”

The BIEA International STEM Innovation Challenge invited young people from the age of nine to 21 to research, write a report and design a solution to Save our shores from plastic waste through STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). In its brief, the BIEA pointed out that one lorryload of plastic is dumped every minute worldwide – the annual equivalent in weight of 40,000 blue whales or 1.6 million elephants. The competition drew entries from schools in countries including China, the United States, Argentina, Norway and Indonesia.

Ashwin took on the role of Project Manager and Lead Scientist for Prata Neptunia, while Merwan was Lead Researcher and Anish the Lead Robotics Designer.

By using hovercraft technology informed by artificial intelligence, the trio were able to devise a design that could travel across multiple terrains, both land and water, and target different types of plastic. These notably included microplastics, which have become a huge problem worldwide because of their devastating effects on marine life.

The team learned project-management skills in order to optimise their time effectively, from the use of Gantt charts to task delegation. They designed prototypes at home, building and testing parts, and investigating processes to remove microplastics in order to determine the feasibility of their design.

As part of the overall design process, they applied skills acquired in Technology lessons before finally designing their solution on CAD software.

Their work led to an invitation from BIEA to participate in the virtual international finals, where they were awarded their third place in the 15-17 category.

Anish said: “We started our journey back in March and were quite behind, compared to other teams, which started earlier. However, through thoughtful planning and hard work, we were able to pull together to create a product we were proud of in time for the due date.”

Unable to meet up freely or access all the resources of The Queen’s Library, the boys worked from home and used technology including Zoom calls to co-ordinate their work.

“We all saw plastic pollution as a big problem all over the world: the BIEA competition has targeted a global crisis that needs fixing.”

The competition gave him and his teammates the opportunity to deploy their skills and knowledge to tackle this crisis, which, he said, has shown him “how we can all work together to solve it”.

Anish added: “Of course, we had our ups and downs, but overall the competition was a great experience with a satisfying conclusion.”

The trio’s project required some fairly advanced Science, as they investigated methods of removing plastics, which led to their inclusion of PETase, an enzyme which catalyses the hydrolysis of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to monomeric mono-2-hydroxyethyl terephthalate (MHET). MHET is then broken down into Ethylene glycol and Terephthalic acid (Benzene-1,4-dicarboxylic acid) using the enzyme MHETase.  The team also delved into fluid dynamics – encompassing Mathematics and Physics – to optimise their design’s motion and efficiency.

The Ocean team, Jashwanth Parimi, Utkarsh Bhamidimarri and Siddarth Jana, also started their project relatively late and had only about a month to complete it.

Jashwanth said: “During multiple Zoom calls, we learned much more about plastic pollution and, eventually, we designed an idea that we thought was suitable for solving the problem. Then we each split into our specialised areas to fulfill the requirements of the project, but we still all helped each other in each of our project areas until we finally finished.”

The team designed a multi-terrain vehicle that used a net in order to collect macro-plastics on both the ocean and the mudflats. “Our project was innovative since we tried to consider all the wildlife on all the terrains, such as fish and snails, and so on.”

Old boy and QE poet-in-residence Anthony Anaxagorou has spoken out against this week’s Government announcement that poetry will become optional in next year’s GCSE English examinations.

Anthony was quoted by the BBC in its report on reaction to the announcement from examinations watchdog Ofqual, while his fellow Old Elizabethan, George the Poet (George Mpanga 2002–2009), was also pictured and mentioned in the article.

And Headmaster Neil Enright said today: “Poetry is, and will remain, core to the curriculum at QE. Throughout last term’s remote learning, staff ensured that poetry kept its important place in lessons delivered through our eQE virtual learning platform.

“We also found that encouraging boys to compose their own poems was a very stimulating, creative activity for the lockdown. And prior to the pandemic, Anthony’s workshops were always a popular draw for the boys.”

Ofqual originally proposed that there would be no changes to the English literature GCSE examination in 2021, but, following a consultation in which some respondents argued that it was hard for pupils “to get to grips with complex literary texts remotely”, the organisation has now said schools can focus on a smaller number of texts.

All pupils will have to write about a Shakespeare play, but they can choose two out of the three remaining content areas: poetry; the 19th-century novel and post-1914 British fiction and drama.

In response, Anthony (OE 1994–1999) said: “Poetry shouldn’t be regarded as an analytical exercise, a response to memory, a means of introducing literary device. Poems do so much more, getting into spaces [and] subjects other modes of language can’t.

“Presenting it as an ‘option’ does nothing but reduce its cultural value more.”

During the Summer Term, School departments including English and Modern Languages ran a number of poetry competitions, and boys’ poems were published in The Arabella – a magazine featuring the work of pupils which is published by the boys.

Teachers found ways to teach poetry remotely, with, for example, the English department making extensive use of pre-recorded video with Year 12 classes, particularly for challenging passages in Shakespeare, Chaucer and the poetry of Wilfred Owen.

Eight QE boys have been picked in the top 5% nationally among the thousands who participated in this year’s Intermediate Biology Olympiad.

In fact, 51 of the 56 QE boys who entered the prestigious competition closely connected with the Royal Society of Biology this year achieved recognition for their performances.

Biology teacher Mev Armon said: “It is tremendously encouraging to have this independent confirmation that we have so many able biologists in our Sixth Form. My congratulations go especially to our eight gold-level candidates, whose performances were very impressive indeed.”

The Intermediate Biology Olympiad is open to students in the first year of post-16 education. It aims to test their knowledge of the subject and to encourage them to continue studying the biosciences beyond school.

This year’s lockdown competition involved a one-hour multiple-choice paper to be taken online, with questions covering GCSE topics and content from the first year of the A-level curriculum. The major areas covered: biological molecules; cell structure; the immune system; exchange surfaces; circulatory systems; plant transport; molecular genetics and biodiversity.

In addition, to the eight gold winners, 14 QE boys achieved silver – a level reached by the top 16% of students nationally – and six took bronze. A further 12 boys were ‘highly commended’ and 11 ‘commended’.

Since 2015, the Intermediate Biology Olympiad has been run by UK Biology Competitions, a Special Interest Group of the Royal Society of Biology, which was set up in 2010.

The eight gold winners, all in Year 12, are: Aqif Choudhury; Bhargab Ghoshal; Ari Karthikeyan; Vivek Nair; George Raynor; Rukshaan Selvendira; Arnav Sharma and Paarth Singhal.