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With coronavirus restrictions precluding a repeat of last year’s inaugural University Mock Interview Evening at the School, QE’s old boys and supporters have instead been turning out in force online to make sure current pupils don’t miss out.

Using the School’s QE Connect social media platform, Assistant Head (Pupil Development) Michael Feven paired up Year 13 boys with Old Elizabethans happy to conduct virtual interviews via Zoom and Skype.

“Whilst we are disappointed not to be able to hold our Mock Interview Evening in person this year, the value of these interviews in supporting boys with their university applications cannot be overstated,” said Mr Feven.

The Autumn Term is a busy time for Year 13 boys, with UCAS applications due in, university admissions tests taking place for Oxbridge places and for degree subjects such as Law and Medicine, and with Oxbridge interviews being held in the run-up to Christmas. Mock interviews constitute an important element of the detailed programme of support that the School provides to help senior pupils secure places on the best courses and at leading universities.

OEs have been helping out sixth-formers with interview practice for many years, but last year’s dedicated mock interview evening at the School, which was attended by nearly 40 alumni and supporters of QE, was the first of its kind. This year, dozens of online-only mock interviews are instead being held; they continue throughout November.

Among those paired together for the mock interviews were Zac Howlett-Davies (OE 2006–2013, pictured) and Year 13’s Zeke Essex, who is applying to read Modern Languages at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. Zac, who read Modern Languages at Durham, uses his French and German on a daily basis in his role in European copyright licensing for printed music publisher Hal Leonard Europe.

“Mr Howlett-Davies gave excellent feedback based on his own experiences and it was great practice before the real thing. He was very knowledgeable and was very easy to have a conversation with,” said Zeke.

Sai Bodanapu, who is among QE’s aspiring medics, pointed out that the specific benefit of meeting his interviewer via Zoom in this pandemic year: “My mock interview helped me as it gave an actual representation of how online interviews will take place.” Sai was interviewed by Andleeb Ahmed, who is an NHS GP and mentor; her son, Fozy Ahmed, who left QE this year, is studying Medicine at Gonville & Caius, Cambridge.

“I am hugely grateful to the longstanding support from our Old Elizabethan community and from other Friends of the School who each year so generously give up their time to support our Year 13 students in this way,” Mr Feven added.

Pupils overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden in the School’s mock US elections, which were carefully modelled on the real poll taking place today on the other side of the Atlantic.

Boys voted in their forms yesterday on their first day back after the holiday, having spent the weeks before half-term finding out more about the two main presidential candidates and the whole American electoral process.

The results, which were announced to the forms today, show that the Democrats’ candidate easily broke through the 270-vote threshold needed to win the electoral college, gaining 444 of the 538 votes available. Forms representing big-hitting states such as California (with 55 votes) and New York (29) backed Biden, even if there were a few upsets, such as Florida (29) returning as Republican.

The popular vote was also emphatic: there were 821 votes for the Democrats, compared with just 322 for the Republicans. Of the six year groups voting, only Year 10 voted red (Republican), while Biden swept the board in Year 7.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “We saw this as a great opportunity for our pupils to expand their knowledge of politics and current affairs, and to enjoy the cut and thrust of an election themselves.

“Our History & Politics department and Extra-Curricular tutors took a lead in providing boys throughout the School with information and resources aimed at stimulating debate, and there were contributions from a number of our Year 12 Politics A-level students.

“We now wait with great interest to find out if American voters concur with the verdict of our boys!”

To start things off, a PowerPoint presentation on the basics of the election was shown to all the tutor groups.

In order to make the experience as realistic as possible, every tutor group was allocated a state. Each had the same number of votes as in the electoral college, ranging from Alaska, Wyoming, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont, all with just three votes apiece, through to Texas, with 38, and California, with its 55.

Boys were challenged to research the state allocated to their form, including topics such as which party it normally votes for, what the major issues there are, and whether it is considered a ‘battleground state’.

To keep the mock election Covid-safe, most of the activities took place online, with links provided through a dedicated page of the School’s eQE digital platform, created by the History & Politics department.

To coincide with the actual election day, a US-themed lunch was served today in the QE Dining Hall: the menu including cheeseburgers, hot dogs and sweet potato fries, with cream soda and popcorn available, too.

Information and links on the eQE election page included:

• Information-packed 10-minute podcasts created by Year 12 members of the QE Politics Society, Utsav Atri, Alexandre Lee and Ciaran Price.
• QE’s own presidential debate, which was recorded as a video. Ciaran was again involved in this, speaking for Biden, while Ethan John, also of Year 12, represented Trump, with Christian Emmanuel putting the questions.
• A series of opinion polls. Asked which candidate had performed better in the final presidential debate, for example, 114 boys chose Biden, while just 35 picked Trump.
• An election forum, where boys have taken full advantage of the opportunity to field their own comments about the elections over the past few weeks in response to questions posted both by their teachers and by classmates.

The eQE page also featured a link to information about the elections for 35 Senate seats taking place at the same time as the presidential contest.

Queen Elizabeth’s School shines brightly in the latest report by the influential Good Schools Guide, with reviewers praising everything from public examination results – “right in the top branches of the academic league table tree” – to music, sport and drama.

The extensive review, written in GSG’s characteristic conversational style, is based on the result of reviewers visiting the School, interviewing Headmaster Neil Enright and speaking to current parents. Schools are not charged for entry in the selective guide and cannot pay to be included, leaving its reviewers free to report as they see fit, whether good or bad.

In its summary of QE, entitled “The last word”, the GSG writers state what they feel makes the School special: “Speculating, hypothesizing, synthesising – it’s all part and parcel of life at QE, where they cream off the most gifted and talented boys from miles around. For hard-working, aspirational boys in the top 10 per cent ability range, it will almost certainly feel like coming home.

“A place where boys can expect to get carried away with the collective will to learn both in and outside the classroom, the result of which is one of the most inspiring learning environments we’ve ever come across.”

Mr Enright welcomed the review’s publication: “This is a very positive review indeed, which captures many of the things that make Queen Elizabeth’s School a state school like no other. It is always gratifying to read third-party appreciation of what we are doing, particularly from an organisation such as GSG, whose reviewers do not mince their words if things are not up to scratch!”

The report, which is now available to GSG subscribers on the organisation’s website, gives an up-to-date view, noting that when the national coronavirus crisis struck in the spring, QE reacted quickly and well, but also learned from it, with IT, co-curricular activities and pastoral support all rapidly adapted to the unprecedented situation.

After outlining the highly competitive admissions process, the report notes that nearly all leavers go to Russell Group universities, with 40 heading to Oxbridge and 32 studying Medicine in 2020, and points out that many of those going to Oxford or Cambridge are the first in their families to go to any university at all.

Noting the importance of setting and of regular testing at the School, the reviewers turn to teaching and learning: “In the lessons we sat in on, the pace of learning took our breath away but what impressed us even more is that how it’s clearly cool to voice wacky ideas and this leads to boys feeling able to take risks in their learning.”

Academic enrichment is highlighted, with reviewers praising the rich array of clubs and societies offered, while also covering academic symposia with girls’ schools and the frequent competition successes in disciplines ranging from robotics to Economics.

The review sets out the large number of music ensembles and the high performance standards in concerts, while the plans for QE’s new Music School also receive a mention.

The popularity of drama, the “intellectual approach to Art”, the wide fixture list in sport and the broad range of trips offered are all covered.

The behaviour of the boys comes in for a special mention (“among the most courteous we’ve met – they take polite to a whole new level”), while the pastoral support, including the fact that all staff are trained in the area of mental health, is highlighted.

There is even a mention for alumni, with reviewers lauding QE Connect, an online networking platform that links current pupils with old boys happy to help in areas such as providing work experience and intern placements, mock interviews and mentoring.

Harvard undergraduate Che Applewhaite’s first-ever documentary found success at an international film festival.

Che’s film, A New England Document, was an official selection at the 2020 Sheffield Doc/Fest (Sheffield International Documentary Festival) and had its premiere online during the summer. He is now working on a second documentary during his final year at Harvard.

The 16-minute A New England Document profiles the work of 20th-century ethnographers Lorna and Lawrence Marshall, using images and text from the Marshall Collection at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. But, as well as recounting their expeditions in Africa, Che (OE 2010–2017) also explores his own concerns with history, with colonialism and with anthropology. He is currently studying Anthropology and History & Literature at Harvard and is due to graduate in May 2021.

In a director’s statement written to accompany the launch of the film, Che said he aimed to show “what the archive didn’t intend”. The 40,000-plus photos in the collection extensively depict the indigenous peoples of the Kalahari, but Che pointed out that few are of the Marshall family, “much less of its patriarch – main expedition funder and co-founder of modern-day defense company Raytheon [Laurence Marshall]. Working with and against the silences in the archive required a polyphonic palimpsest of archival found footage, photographs and documents paired with my own shooting in the Peabody Museum, wider Cambridge, Massachusetts and Peterborough, New Hampshire.”

Che, who was born in Trinidad, told The Harvard Gazette staff writer Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite in an interview: “I was interested in how [I could] reckon with the silences in the archives that prevent me from having a fuller understanding of my own history as a person under an empire.”

Starting in 1952, the Marshalls went on extended expeditions to the Kalahari Desert over four decades, amassing a collection of more than 40,000 photographs.

Che spent a term going through the photographs and diaries, and then learned some of the skills he needed to make a film, including storyboarding, camerawork and video-editing, helped by staff at Harvard’s Film Study Center.

He met New York Times writer Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, daughter of the collection’s creators, who invited him to film at her New Hampshire home. The finished film included readings of the diaries featuring both her voice and Che’s.

“Reading some of the things she has written and having conversations with her about her family helped strengthen the film,” he said. “I got to see how people [in a family] can have very different life paths and outcomes, and I wanted to show that in the film.”

Che’s website describes the resulting work as “fragmentary counterpoint upon the haunting sounds of archival ghosts – of future possibility arising from once-known pasts”.

During Sheffield Doc/Fest, Che was a contributor to a virtual panel session, Decolonizing Documentary.

He is now continuing to create films and is working on a creative senior thesis documentary, entitled In Loving Memory, which Che’s website describes as narrating “the experiential archives of a Black mother whose father and son breathe once more through her writings on grief and the young athletes she coaches at Normandy High School in St. Louis, Missouri”.

It took a little time to get to grips with the complications of year-group bubbles, staggered lunchtimes and other coronavirus-related restrictions, but QE’s clubs have been firmly back in action this term.

Well over 50 clubs and societies are currently running at the School, covering almost every conceivable interest, from table tennis to practical science, and from manga to Mathematics.

Head of Extra-Curricular Enrichment Rebecca Grundy said: “We normally hold a Clubs and Societies Fair at the start of the School year for Year 7 and 8 boys in our Shearly Hall, but that had to be cancelled because of Covid-19, so instead we have run an online fair on our eQE digital platform to give pupils all the information they need.

“It is a joy to be able to offer so many clubs in these challenging circumstances; our students and teachers have been working hard to maintain a considerable variety of enrichment activities.”

However, although keen to offer as many opportunities as possible, the School remains vigilant regarding the risks of the virus. In fact, some clubs and societies, such as the Christian Union, Science under the Microscope and the Scope and Microscope arts magazine groups are currently meeting online only.

The range of activities on offer includes various Music-related groups (choirs, ensembles and orchestras) as well as clubs and societies for chess, water-polo, Japanese, the Model United Nations debating society, Med Soc, Afro Caribbean Soc and rugby, to name but a few.

Several clubs take a creative approach to stimulating interest in academic subjects. One that is run on Fridays for Year 8 boys is a regular fixture in young linguist Anik Singh’s week, for example: ”Languages Board Games Club is really fun as well as educational, as we can play our favourite games in a new way and learn new vocabulary at the same time,” he said. Pictured here is a keenly fought round of German Scrabble: one boy is off to a strong start, with ‘Füchse’ (foxes) scoring 26 points.

At the Tuesday lunchtime Marvel Club, which is run by the boys themselves, the accent is firmly on fun, with Room F recently reverberating to the sound of the highly-rated 2018 superhero film, Avengers: Infinity War.

Higher up the School, the new Music Enrichment Society has already struck a chord, reports Director of Music Ruth Partington.

Raphael Herberg, of Year 12,  spoke there on the topic of Female Composers. “Raphael gave informative and interesting biographies of the composers Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger and Judith Weir, and played excerpts of their music, asking the boys present to comment on what they thought of it,” said Miss Partington.

“He posed interesting discussion questions on why female composers were under-represented in the classical music world and what could be done in education settings to alleviate this. The boys enjoyed a lively discussion on the nature of the works studied at GCSE and A-level Music, as well as the music played in our ensembles, and whether female composers should have broader representation here.

“It was wonderful to see one of our A-level musicians talk knowledgably and passionately about this. A great deal of thought and care had gone into the research and presentation of this topic. The boys clearly enjoyed listening to music by composers they had never heard of, and they enthusiastically engaged in the well-led debate.”

Having just been opened to Year 12 boys, it is hoped that the Music Enrichment Society will eventually be open to the whole School, with a session run every half-term.