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Sixty-five senior QE boys have enrolled on a coaching programme run by alumnus Kam Taj.

Kam (Kamran Tajbaksh, OE 2004–2011), a performance coach, inspirational speaker and author, will help the pupils through an online course supported by more than 100 videos and activities.

After taking a first in the Manufacturing Engineering tripos at Churchill College, Cambridge, Kam secured a job as a management consultant with a global firm. However, he had begun doing performance coaching work while still at university, and in 2016 left the consultancy world to concentrate fully on coaching and motivational speaking.

Thanking Headmaster Neil Enright and Assistant Head Michael Feven (Pupil Development) for their support, Kam said: “QE is consistently named as one of the best schools in the UK, and I’m confident that this course will be an asset to the students’ academic and personal development, especially during these uncertain times.”

Kam is, in fact, a regular visitor to QE. In recent years, he has led a motivational skills workshop for Year 12 boys and helps pupils with their Oxbridge preparations.

Mr Enright said: “I am pleased that so many of our boys are taking advantage of Kam’s expertise by signing up for his Exam Success Academy online programme. Kam is both an Elizabethan and a very gifted performance coach, and although there are, of course, no public examinations this year, I am sure that the principles the boys will learn on the course will stand them in good stead for the future.”

The programme focuses on eight principles: time management; mindset management; study tools & techniques; on-the-day performance; academic & personal support groups; sleep optimisation; physical activity & movement, and nutrition & hydration.

Kam had been due to visit the School last month to talk to Year 12 on Student Life at Oxbridge (discussing topics ranging from choosing a college, the academic intensity of Oxbridge, student life beyond academic matters, and common traps that students fall into in their first year), but the visit had to be shelved because of the Covid-19 restrictions.

It would have followed three workshops held earlier in the Spring Term and run by Mr Feven, as well as Head of Year 12 Helen Davies and Head of English Robert Hyland (both Oxford graduates), that were focused on providing Year 12 boys with advice on applying to Oxbridge. The workshops take place each year, although Kam’s talk was to have been a new addition to this programme.

Two Sixth Form teams devised innovative engineering solutions to workplace safety challenges and successfully presented them to the world’s largest health & safety organisation.

The presentations were part of this year’s QE submissions under the Engineering Excellence Scheme (EES). The Year 12 boys are hoping to follow in the illustrious footsteps of other QE EES teams of recent years whose inventions under the Engineering Project Challenges initiative have achieved regional and national success.

They gave their presentations to members of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH, a UK-based global chartered body for health & safety professionals), just before the COVID-19 social distancing measures were put in place The venue was UBM’s centre close to Blackfriars Bridge in London.

QE’s Head of Technology, Michael Noonan, said: “The teams had been set engineering challenges to work on by two major office fit-out companies, Morgan Lovell and Overbury. QE has achieved brilliant things in recent years in this initiative, and this year’s boys did not disappoint: after six months’ work, they came up with carefully thought-through solutions based on sound engineering principles. They then presented these ideas fluently and with some confidence to the assembled IOSH members and other guests.”

The Engineering Project Challenges started off with a project tour and introduction to site conditions and equipment by industry sponsors Overbury and Morgan Lovell, both part of the Morgan Sindall construction group.

After seeing demonstrations of equipment and operatives at work, the boys were charged with finding innovative solutions to two specific problems.

The Overbury team had the challenge of creating an easy-to-use, hand-held, non-intrusive tool to check if an electrical steel wired armoured cable is live. The team members are: Enoch Hitchcock, Yai Sagolsem, Pranay Surana and Ukendar Vadivel.

The Morgan Lovell team were tasked with making health & safety improvements to a portable band saw, including blade protection and extraction of dust, to ensure that users could cut material both safely and quickly. The blade protection had to be designed in such a way that it could be retrofitted to existing machines. The team comprises: Brandon Ionev, Thomas Mgbor, Kai Sethna and Hugh Westcott.

Both teams were required to undertake analysis through extensive research to find the best practical and innovative engineering methods, and to solve these challenges without involving excess manufacturing costs. They were assisted by their industry mentor, representing Overbury and Morgan Lovell, Health Safety & Wellbeing Manager Alex Wood.

In their 15-minute presentation, team leader Ukendar and his fellow team members working on the project with Overbury explained their solution – a device featuring a hinged clamp and a handle with red and green LEDs to indicate whether the cable being worked on was live or not. In a question-and-answer session with members, they confirmed that the device could readily be manufactured to accommodate different sizes of steel wired armoured cable.

The Morgan Lovell team explained that their guard could be easily and quickly fitted to a band saw in a busy workplace environment. Questioned as to why they had made it in opaque materials, they confirmed that this was just for the prototype and that production models could be made in transparent ABS plastic.

Overall, the objective of the challenges is to introduce young people to careers in the construction and building fit-out and office fit-out industries and to help them apply what they have learnt about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in the classroom into the real world.

The two teams will be hoping to emulate the successes of predecessors, including a 2018 QE team who devised a stair-climbing robot for transporting large sheets of material up staircases on construction sites. This was Highly Commended in the Contribution to the Business Award at the Celebration and Assessment Day of the Engineering Excellence Scheme (EES). And in the year before that, a QE project for the EES – a helmet which warned construction workers when workplace noise was exceeding safe levels – was among the national engineering prize-winners at The Big Bang, the UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair.

In a video filmed for The Times newspaper, QE’s Head of Technology Michael Noonan explains how he is leading urgent work to 3D-print face shields ahead of a predicted UK peak to the COVID-19 virus in the next few days.

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Mr Noonan is spearheading a London-wide effort to 3D-print the Personal Protective Equipment.

And with QE’s own machines running around the clock and several pupils following suit on their home 3D printers, hundreds of face shields are currently being despatched from the School.

“We have material, we have manufacturing facilities, we have knowledge and skill and we have the ability to create sanitary environments, so we are putting our skill and all of our facilities into solving [the PPE shortage] problem right now,” Mr Noonan told the team from The Times when they visited to film him at work (while maintaining safe social distancing).

“And there are makers and engineers, designers, consultants and DT departments all over the country that have answered this call and that have pitched themselves into volunteering to help with this effort.”

The video explains how the face shields can be put together from two 3D-printed frame parts, combined with a transparent plastic shield and an elastic strap, or even a rubber band.

• Click here for more information on how Mr Noonan and the pupils got involved and on how the face shields are being distributed locally.
• Click here to support the fundraiser by 3DCrowd UK.

Head of Library Services Surya Bowyer has been making sure that boys are aware of the wealth of resources that are available online – both for study and for leisure.

He is using the shutdown to develop the way the Library team uses technology. And, as a result, they are not only supporting the boys in the holidays and in their remote learning during term time, but also deriving benefits that will long outlast the current crisis.

“When it became clear that schools would be forced to close as a result of Covid-19, our first thought was: ‘What does a library do when its doors are locked and lights turned off?’” Mr Bowyer says.

In the first few days, a small number of boys whose parents were designated key workers used the library to continue their studies. Meanwhile, for boys at home, the Library team has shared audiobooks and e-book databases, and they are recommending a Book of the Week, which is made available to read free online. The first recommendation was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

“We have also released a list of activities of things you can do with the book you are reading, that go beyond simply reading… for example, designing a map of the book’s locations, or designing a new book cover.”

Mr Bowyer and Library Services Assistant Corinna Illingworth have also put together their own guide to digital galleries and museums that are available to browse online. “There’s a wealth of art and history out there on the internet: it’s our job, as librarians, to publicise and share these resources throughout the QE community.

“This is a key issue with the internet more widely – there is a lot of information, so much so that it’s often difficult to get a sense of what is worth your time. This is a key job of The Queen’s Library during these increasingly digital times,” said Mr Bowyer.

A number of activities and competitions have taken place to stretch the boys and encourage them to use their imagination and be creative. These included a ‘blackout’ poetry workshop, during which boys had to black out the majority of a piece of text, leaving only a handful of words to make a poem. Head of English, Robert Hyland, launched a Brave New World poetry competition, which was followed by an art competition on the same theme.

Just before the sudden start of the shutdown, the editorial team were able to put together the second edition of the Arabella – the pupils’ own magazine, open to contributors from Years 7-13. Included in this online edition, which may be viewed here on eQE by current QE families, are poetry, prose and art.

Editor-in-chief Josh Osman, of Year 13, said: “Sadly we were unable to put out a print edition. But the Arabella has been our way of uniting the School through creativity, taking in submissions from all year groups.”

Josh also heralded the success of the blackout poetry workshop: “It allowed people who would not otherwise have ventured into poetry to try their hand at something accessible yet deceptively complex.”

Surgeon and former School Captain Ash Kalraiya is one of only 11 Fellows appointed for 2020 to the prestigious NHS Innovation Accelerator. The honour recognises his work as founder and CEO of MediShout – a company dedicated to helping hospitals solve their logistics problems.

While celebrating news of the fellowship, Ash (OE 1997-2004; School Captain 2003) has in recent weeks turned MediShout’s attention towards helping to meet the huge challenge posed to the NHS by the Coronavirus pandemic.

“We have currently adapted our platform so hospitals and GP practices can report all Covid-19-related issues, such as not enough PPE [Personal Protective Equipment], a need for more stock or equipment and issues with new patterns of working.

“We just had 150 GP practices ask to sign up and several NHS Trusts, so it’s super-busy as you can imagine! However, we’ve managed to improve things for hospitals using our technology so far, which is nice to know.”

After leaving QE, Ash read Medicine at Imperial College London from 2004-2010, also completing a BSc in Management at Imperial as part of his studies.

Currently an Orthopaedic Registrar with NHS North West London, Ash says: “I’ve worked in the NHS over the past decade, and during that time realised my biggest frustrations were when logistical issues (like missing stock, or broken equipment, printers not working etc) delayed me every day and meant I had less time to spend with patients.”

MediShout’s website recounts that a particular turning point for Ash came when several of his operations had to be cancelled one morning because a lightbulb in theatre was broken. Even more frustratingly, several members of staff had known of the problem, but not reported it.

“The NHS has actually seen a 32% increase in cancelled operations due to equipment issues, so it’s a huge, neglected problem,” he says. “So, I created a solution called MediShout: an app for staff to instantly report such issues to the person or team who creates change.”

The MediShout app and platform uses cloud-based technology to connect people, helpdesks, smartphones, tablets, IT systems and RFID tagging. NHS staff use the app to make instantaneous reports of any logistical issue that threatens to hamper them in their work, and the system’s algorithms then ensure this information gets to the right people.

Furthermore, the combination of big data and artificial intelligence means that Medishout can “predict problems before they even happen,” Ash adds, thus driving long-term improvements, in addition to identifying the issues most affecting patient care so that these can be fixed first.

The NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA), now in its fifth year, is an NHS England initiative delivered in partnership with England’s 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs). It recognises and supports those offering high-impact solutions supporting the priority areas for the NHS in England, as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.

The NIA’s recognition, which is both for him as a Fellow and for MediShout, follows several years’ hard work in building up the business. “We started to get some traction with quite a few hospitals, so got accepted to the quite competitive NHS Innovation Accelerator. It is a huge honour to be accepted as one of the Fellows,” he says.

The NIA’s rigorous selection process includes review by over 100 clinical, patient and commercial assessors, an informal review by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), interviews, and due diligence.

Concerned about the impact that the cancellation of this year’s A-level examinations might have on current QE boys, Ash has been in touch with the School to offer them his encouragement.

“Journeys to success are long, usually a lifetime. So, A-levels are a stepping stone, not the final destination,” he points out, adding that not having the desired A-level grades on their CV will not stop boys from fulfilling their big ambitions in life. “It’s ok not to succeed every time. It took me five years to get into the QE rugby A team. I failed my first-year exams at medical school. I failed both my surgical exams first time. I’m pretty happy with my journey, as failing and learning is what pushed me to keep going!”

Ash keeps in close touch with old QE friends. “My funniest and most active WhatsApp group is with friends from my year – Joe Besser, Mat Houghton, Anil Haldar, Ed Hughes, Gideon Adler, and Deepon Sen Gupta (he didn’t actually go to QE, but most people assumed he did!).

“Joe is in Australia and visiting him in 2015 is when I met my now wife, Sonal Lodhia, who moved to London. It’s a funny old world but I can indirectly thank him, that I’m being well fed during this Covid-19 lockdown!”