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A record 90 old boys and other friends of the School this year conducted more than 150 individual university mock interviews for pupils as part of the QE Futures programme.

This tally does not include the many mock interviews held by QE teachers, both for their own students and for pupils at three other schools, nor does it include a range of other interview support measures for aspiring medics, Oxbridge candidates and others in Year 13.

The programme aims to build on last year’s record of university success, with 54 boys securing places at Oxford or Cambridge and with 55% of all QE leavers receiving offers from a university ranked in the QS World Top 5.

Assistant Head (Pupil Destinations) James Kane, who leads the QE Futures programme, said: “We seek to provide detailed preparation for all our students applying to university, maximising their chances of obtaining offers on the most sought-after courses at some of the world’s top educational institutions.

“Last year, a record 90% of QE applicants were called to interview at Oxford and Cambridge. Many exciting course offers have already been made this year, with a very strong number of Oxford offers. We await further news and will then support students with confirming their preferences. We are most grateful to all those OEs and other friends of the School who support the process so generously. ”

As an introduction to the interview season, in November Gwyneth Hamand, the London Outreach Officer for Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, delivered an in-School workshop for 50 of QE’s Oxford and Cambridge applicants, giving them insight into what to expect from the interview process.

That was followed by a visit from Old Elizabethan doctors and entrepreneurs Kavi Samra and Paul Jung (both 2008–2015). The pair held interviews in School over three days for all 33 medical applicants as part of the QE Futures Pathways to Medicine programme.

Separately, Mr Kane and Head of Biology Gillian Ridge together led a session with 20 aspiring medics, taking them through mock Multiple Mini Interviews. (MMIs are used by medical schools to test a wide range of skills and assess potential candidates.)

More generally, Year 13 students have been undertaking mock university practice in lessons, and developing their confidence and articulacy during a series of inter-class debates.

Among those who have benefitted are two pupils applying to read Mathematics at Cambridge. Shreyaas Sandeep said: “I found the mock interviews to be extremely helpful, as they provided a unique insight into the process and helped me understand which areas of the subject I should focus on.”

Classmate Saim Khan added: “The mock interview was an excellent opportunity to get firsthand experience in the university admissions process from someone who had been through the exact same steps only two years prior. The OE who interviewed me was very knowledgeable, more than willing to help, and extremely thorough!”

QE staff liaise with teachers at The Henrietta Barnett School and Highgate School to provide the respective schools’ pupils with mock interview practice. In addition, QE teachers give their time to provide online mock interviews for students from Ashmole Academy in Barnet.

• The next major event in the QE Futures calendar is the School’s Careers Convention on Wednesday 12th February. Like the mock interviews, the convention is always heavily supported by Old Elizabethans, who provide current pupils with the benefit of their individual experience and with sector-specific careers advice.

Queen Elizabeth’s School starts 2025 with this year’s School Captain, Simardeep Sahota, at the head of a new team of some 130 prefects.

Simardeep (pictured centre), who was appointed recently by Headmaster Neil Enright, will be supported by Senior Vice-Captains Adithya Raghuraman (right) and Keon Robert (left). The new team are all drawn from Year 12.

Mr Enright said: “My congratulations go to Simardeep, Adithya and Keon. Simardeep joins a long line of Captains of Queen Elizabeth’s School dating back to at least 1876. I am sure he will distinguish himself in the role and add lustre to our proud traditions.

“I also congratulate all the prefects: this year group as a whole are notable for being pleasant to deal with, kind and full of character.”

Head of Year 12 Akhil Gohil gave his own assessment of the top three. “Simardeep is a natural leader; he’s impressive, courteous, confident, and well-respected among his peers. Adithya is intelligent, empathetic and creative. Keon is thoughtful, hard-working and has a strong moral compass.”

The appointments reflect the positive contribution the pupils have made to QE and the regard in which they are held by classmates and the School staff.

The prefects not only play an essential role in the smooth running of the School, but they are also inspiring role models for younger boys.

The top three are supported by five pairs of Vice-Captains as the most senior prefects. They are pictured here, together with Simardeep, Adithya and Keon. The 2025 Vice-Captains, with their areas of responsibility, are:

• Samrath Sareen and Sasen Kankanamge Don – charity & community engagement
• Felix Calder and Suhaas Sabbella – equality, diversion & inclusion
• Aadam Aslam and Oscar Ayodele – enrichment & involvement
• Akhilesh Karthikeyan and Ved Nair – environment
• Krutarth Behera and Simi Bloom – student voice.

Reacting to his appointment, Simardeep wrote: “I am deeply honoured and grateful to Mr Enright for entrusting me with this incredible opportunity. Knowing that both my peers and the staff see me as worthy of this role is truly humbling—and it inspires me to give it my absolute best. With such a talented and committed team by my side, I am confident that we’ll accomplish great things together in the year ahead. A big congratulations to everyone who’s part of the prefect team!”

Drama features for the first time in the 12th edition of The Arabella – QE’s pupil-run creative magazine.

Drama joins art, music, poetry & other creative writing, politics, science and foreign languages & linguistics as areas covered, with the latest edition focusing on an overall theme of Expression.

The theme has been widely interpreted by the boys. Their hugely diverse contributihassanons range from a poetic exploration by one of the School’s younger pupils, Huy Bui, of the famous opening line of Hamlet’s soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be’, through to a coruscating take on the Democrats’ performance in the recent US election written by another Year 7 pupil, Hassan Omer.

The boys were assisted by a staff team including Library Services Assistant Corinna Illingworth. She said: “The student editorial team have once again produced a high-quality publication. There is surely something to interest everyone in its 54 pages: in exploring the theme of Expression, the boys have expressed themselves creatively and in very diverse ways!”

The magazine is named after Arabella Stuart, fourth in line to the throne, who in 1610 secretly married William Seymore, a descendant of Henry VII and himself sixth-in-line to the throne. To prevent any chance of a Tudor attempt to seize the crown from the Stuarts, James I sent Seymore to the Tower of London and committed Arabella to the care of the Bishop of Durham. Her connection to the School is that she stayed for some months in Barnet in the house of Thomas Conyers, a QE Governor, after falling ill en route to Durham, while Rev. Matthias Milward, a Governor and subsequently Master of the School, attended to her spiritual needs.

Anyone with access to the eQE portal may read The Arabella here.

Head Editor Timi Banjo, of Year 12, leads a 12-strong team of editors and advertising managers drawn from the senior year groups. He said: “This edition of The Arabella captures the spirit of creativity, exploration, and expression that defines our school community.”

Year 11’s Soham Sapra got the drama content off to a good start with an essay on the ‘spell-binding performance’ of comedian Robin Williams’ in his voice-acting for Disney’s 1992 animated film, Aladdin.

Here is a small selection of the many other contributions:

• The above artwork produced by Year 11’s Kyaan Syed
• A poem by Danyal Rahim, of Year 10, extolling the praises of sweets and chocolate
• Year 10 boy Nikhil Francine’s analysis of Sibelius’ Violin Concerto
• A piece of creative writing by Elijah Bedion, of Year 7, entitled The Window
• Year 11 pupil Vu-Lam Le-Nguyen’s exploration of The Intertwined
• Lexicons of France and its Former Colonies
• Sixth-former Harshith Sharavana’s account of the work of 19^th-century doctor Ignaz Semmelweis in introducing antiseptic procedures in hospitals and thus reducing fatal infections
• A short Classics essay by Felix Calder, of Year 12, on Is Roman Satire a genuine expression of feelings? A defence of Juvenal’s Satire 6.

Shown here are QE’s gold award-winners in the UK Bebras Challenge – a competition that aims to introduce pupils to computational thinking.

These winners, representing almost three-quarters of the QE entrants, qualified for their awards after coming in the top 10% of entrants nationally. Among them are 12 pupils, from Years 8 & 9, who achieved a perfect score.

QE’s entrants achieved an average score of 179 points – far ahead of the Hertfordshire and national averages of 112 and 106 respectively.

Head of Digital Teaching and Learning Michael Noonan said: “This was an extraordinary collective performance from our students in their first-ever participation in this competition. The gold award-winners now go on to the next round, called The Coding Challenge, which will be held in School on 24^th March – QE’s 452^nd anniversary.

“We recognise the importance of digital literacy and are keen to encourage boys’ participation in exciting computing-related events and competitions through our QE Flourish programme.”

The Bebras Challenge is organised by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in partnership with the University of Oxford. It involves tackling a series of interactive tasks designed to encourage logic and problem-solving.

Distinction prizes were awarded to the top 25% of QE performers in the Bebras Challenge’s intermediate (Years 8 & 9) and élite categories (Sixth Form), while merit prizes went to the next 25%.

Best-in-school prizes went to the 12 intermediate category boys with perfect scores of 220: These are, in Year 8: Vivaan Gupta; Aaron Singh; Rishaan Harne; and Noble Laturia. The Year 9 boys are: Kiyan Popat; Ryan Uppal; Aarush Yadav; Aneesh Botcha; Atharva Rao; Avi Aggarwal; Kian Aggarwal; Priyankan Ampalavanar; Arjun Darade; Arnay Gupta; Advik Gupta; Tahiyan Khan; Darsh Nandania; Aaditya Pimple; and Niketh Putta.

Akhilesh Karthikeyan, of Year 12, took the élite prize with his score of 192.

In The Coding Challenge, boys will be able to choose between five skill-based categories, two using the Turtle Blockly programming language, and three that require a text-based language.

• Twenty-five sixth-formers (18 in Year 12 and seven in Year 13) sat the British Informatics Olympiad 2025 first round. BIO aims to encourage students to take an active interest in information technology. The first round involves problems to be solved against the clock with only a pen, paper and a computer. The results will be released later this month.

Younger boys explored their own family histories during a visit by a team from London’s Migration Museum, while a special session helped older pupils with their GCSE Geography studies.

Before the visit organised by the Geography department, the whole of Year 8 had been asked to interview family members about their own migration stories and journeys.

Then, as part of workshops taking place throughout the morning, the boys used hi-tech ArcGIS mapping tools on their 1:1 tablet computers, mapping all the journeys made by the people they had interviewed.

Head of Geography Chris Butler said: “Many of our pupils’ parents have direct or indirect experience of the process, and we want the boys to celebrate this diversity and include their family and friends through their interviews and experiences within their communities.”

The session for the Year 8 boys ended with a Geospatial analysis of their journeys (using ArcGIS).

There was a session for Year 11 historians in the afternoon, with the boys studying the history of migration as a unit in their GCSEs.

Migration features as a topic in the AQA examination board’s GCSE syllabus’s sections on The changing economic world and on Urban issues and challenges.

The Migration Museum was founded by Barbara Roche, a former Labour Minister of State for Asylum and Immigration.

She believed that Britain’s migration history should be placed at the heart of the national story, arguing for the establishment of the museum based on her time as Minister and on visits to similar museums in other parts of the world – notably Ellis Island in New York.

Since 2020, the Migration Museum has been based in Lewisham Shopping Centre in south London. It has received planning permission for a permanent home in the City of London, close to Aldgate and the Tower of London, which is due to open in 2027.

This will be allied to a network of venues across the UK, and to a digital storytelling platform.