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A-level French students had plenty of opportunity to practise their skills in the language on a trip to Paris that also gave them a grounding in the culture while taking in all the sights.

They saw the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysees and the Louvre, as well as visiting attractions specially selected to correspond to their interests in French cuisine, sport and politics.

Head of Languages Nora Schlatte said: “Each day, the students enjoyed guided visits by native speakers, requiring them to understand and ask questions in French: they coped extremely well with this high level of challenge. Indeed, many guides commented on the impressive level of competency shown by the boys.”

The Languages department runs a trip to the French capital every two years, ensuring that all boys can go to Paris at least once during their French A-level studies.

For this visit, undertaken shortly before coronavirus restrictions were introduced, 23 Year 12 and Year 13 pupils headed off on the Eurostar along with three staff: Ms Schlatte; French teacher Gillian Ross, who organised the trip, and David Ryan, Deputy Head.

The party stayed in the Louis Blanc hotel near the Gare du Nord and conveniently situated opposite a Métro station, enabling the boys to reach the sights easily.

A particular highlight was a visit to the Senate (Sénat) at the Palais de Luxembourg, the French equivalent of the House of Lords, where students were shown the impressive gold interiors of the staterooms designed by the famous Marie de’ Medici, a 16th and 17th-century queen of France and patron of the arts. The boys were given access to the main debating chamber, known as the Hemisphere, and were informed about the French system of government.

There was also a tour of the Stade de France, where the students were given access to the dressing rooms decorated for the Six Nations rugby tournament and enjoyed the opportunity to see strips belonging to several French football and rugby sporting heroes.

The sixth-formers were also taken round the vibrant Aligre market, where they learned about the importance of food and drink in French culture and how markets are still hugely popular with consumers.

They were particularly impressed with the range of produce available and enjoyed tasting the cheese and charcuterie, explained Ms Schlatte.

“It was great to give students the opportunity to use their excellent levels of French to interact with issues they are interested in,” she concluded.

School Captain Ivin Jose’s imaginative short story, looking at climate change through the eyes of an elderly, world-travelling balloonist, has won him the top prize in the national Science Challenge Competition 2020.

Ivin’s 1,200-word feature took both the top prize in its category and the Overall Schools Winner Award, judged by Lord Robert Winston, in the annual Royal College Science Union (RSCU) competition. The RCSU is the student union for students at Imperial College London from the Faculty of Natural Sciences.

Feedback from the competition markers lauded Ivin’s “unique” style in a “gentle yet captivating” essay. One marker wrote: “The message is delivered subtly, but without detracting from its importance.” A second marker told Ivin: “It is clear that you are very talented at scientific writing, which is generally a very tricky thing to do!”

Ivin, of Year 12, was shortlisted as one of the three finalists for his category and was invited to the awards ceremony in the Royal Society of Chemistry Library.

Unfortunately, the event coincided with QE’s Senior Awards Ceremony, at which Ivin not only won several prizes, but was also scheduled to deliver a vote of thanks as School Captain. His father therefore attended the competition ceremony in his stead, where scientist, doctor and TV presenter Professor Lord Winston presented the prizes. Lord Winston has been the ambassador for the Science Challenge for 12 years.

Ivin said: “I was delighted and surprised to learn that I had won the awards for both the feature category and the Overall Schools Winner Award.” He won £500, with the prize package also including a visit to the House of Lords.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to Ivin on this exceptional achievement. He is an exemplary pupil, achieving high academic standards and contributing fully to extra-curricular activities, while showing great dedication to serving QE in his role as School Captain.”

Ivin was alerted to the competition by Academic Enrichment Tutor and Physics teacher Gillian Deakin. There were four categories: video, essay, feature and freestyle. Ivin chose the feature category, for which entrants had to cover “what good climate means to different people, and what this means for how we respond to climate change”.

“I chose to do the feature article question, as the blend of creativity and scientific fact appealed to me.”

The guest judge for this category was Mun Keat Looi, a science writer, who was awarded the silver Rising Star Award at the 2015 British Media Awards. He is the author of two books, Big Questions in Science: The quest to solve the great unknowns and the Geek Guide to Life.

Ivin said: “I wrote my feature article titled Memories of an Old World Traveller. I decided that it would be interesting to explore the feature article question from the perspective of an older narrator in order to explore how much the earth’s climate has changed over time, as well as my desire to motivate and inspire readers to action.”

The article tells the story of a 92-year-old hot air balloonist reflecting on happy memories of travelling the world and “witnessing the stunning peaks of the Himalayas, tasting the spices of Asia and beholding the beauty of the Alaskan Northern Lights”.

One of the marker’s commented on this aspect of the feature: “It is very interesting to introduce so many different cultures’ approaches to climate science, and you have done this very well.”

Realising in his old age that the climate is rapidly changing, the traveller-narrator gets out his balloon for one final journey to investigate humanity’s response to the crisis. The essay finishes with the narrator’s thoughts on the comprehensive measures that will be necessary to resolve the problem of global warming.

• Read Ivin’s winning entry, Memories Of An Old World Traveller.

A QE team who tested the commercial appeal of their beeswax-based, eco-friendly product at a Young Enterprise Trade Fair are planning to continue with the venture, even when the competition ends.

The team, who have named their firm The Green Bee Company, are producing re-usable wraps as an alternative to plastic kitchen film. Managing Director Mansimar Singh, of Year 12, said: “We believe very strongly in the product and in its potential for success.”

In addition to utilising natural beeswax for the film and for smaller beeswax sachets, the team sourced their other materials from local producers and also made sure their packaging was 100% plastic-free. “With recent youth activism in favour of sustainability and against climate change, we felt these should be issues our product should address, said Mansimar.

The team took their product to Old Spitalfields Market (before the current coronavirus restrictions) to sell at the Young Enterprise Trade Fair held there. Enrichment Tutor Alex Czirok-Carman said: “The boys worked very hard both in the run-up to the fair and on the day itself. They devoted their lunchtimes and time after school for many weeks to manufacture the product by hand.

“At the fair they sold all day and had a great time talking to the public and to the other teams. I was particularly impressed by how they explained their product to people – they were so confident and assured. They all gained a great deal from the experience.”

Mansimar agreed: “Many of the challenges of running a business are well-documented so when, as a team, we came up with a solution to an issue – that sense of achievement was unmatched. The selling experience was rewarding.”

To fulfil the Young Enterprise requirements, the boys had to establish a brand, create a scrapbook and generate an online presence for their company. “They chose the name The Green Bee Company because they wanted both the name and their product to have a message and a story. This was also reflected in their excellent logo,” added Mr Czirok-Carman.

The profits the boys made from the event at Old Spitalfields Market have been ploughed back into the business.

The Green Bee Company comprises:
Mansimar Singh – Managing Director (Year 12)
Ansh Jassra – Financial Director (Year 10)
Sudhamshu Gummadavelli – Marketing (Year 10)
Abhiraj Singh – Marketing (Year 10)
Haipei Jiang – Marketing (Year 10)
Anubhav Rathore – Product Development (Year 10)
Dylan Domb – Product Development (Year 10)
Yashaswar Kotakadi – Product Development (Year 10)
Ashwin Sridhar – Team member (Year 10)
Heemy Kalam – Team member (Year 10)
Shreyank Thottungal – Team member (Year 12)
Siddhant Kansal – Team member (Year 11)

• Update 9th May 2020: The Green Bee team won the Best Team Journey award at the North London Regional Finals, which were held virtually. The award will be presented to the School once the lockdown period is over.Judge Or Paran, a Vice President at Citi Bank, said the judging panel had found the QE team to have done a “really great job”, with “fantastic work that was evident throughout the duration of the competition” – work that was “well-coordinated and with beautiful attention to detail”.

  The overall Best Company award went to a team from The Henrietta Barnett School, who progress to the next round.

Broughton overcame Pearce by just two points in the final of the Year 7 Inter-House Debating Competition.

Broughton proposed the motion: This house believes that climate change is the biggest danger facing the modern world. The debate took place just before the current Coronavirus crisis erupted globally.

The debate provoked passionate and even provocative contributions, including the view that climate change was largely a ‘first world’ preoccupation, and a claim that a rising death toll due to climate change would have a positive side.

Pranav Challa, the main speaker, had five minutes to make his case. In support of the motion. Head of English, Robert Hyland, who organised the event said: “He was a confident, articulate speaker. He described what he sees as the three ‘cruxes’ of the dangers we face: food production, shelter and water.”

Pranav went on to describe how climate change will affect food production in a world in which more than 1 billion people are already suffering from malnutrition. He said that extreme weather could affect our future supply of drinking water, that rising sea levels are putting coastal communities in danger, and that 200 million people will be displaced in the next 20 years.

Pranav was supported by the second speaker, Kavin Rameshshanker, who spoke about drought, the impact of climate change on the global economy and the loss of bio-diversity, ten species becoming extinct every day.

In his five-minute response, Adokshaj Magge, of Pearce, sought to challenge the terms of the motion. He suggested that the preoccupation with climate change comes from the privileged perspective of developed countries. “He spoke passionately about poverty, about disease and about the lack of basic healthcare in many countries,” said Mr Hyland.

Adokshaj described the overuse of forest fuels and deforestation as the “mother of all problems” and argued that the 3 billion people living in, or facing, poverty do not have time to worry about climate change when they are battling for day-to-day survival, while often being denied their human rights. He argued that changes in the weather have been going on since the dawn of time.

Pearce’s second speaker, Colin Copcea,  suggested that we face more important issues than climate change, such as who will be the next president of the US, Brexit and terrorism. “Right now, climate change is not at the top of the list,” he said. He also talked about economic crises, referencing, in particular, Venezuela.

In the following floor debate, Adam Liang, Kayilai Dinesh and Ishaan Bhandari for Broughton pitted their wits against Jamie Reeve, Ayan Hirani and Johnny Yassa from Pearce. “Some great points were made,” said Mr Hyland.

Adam said that problems caused by human greed, such as deforestation, were intrinsic to the issue of climate change.

“There was a suggestion that climate change is actually helping to reduce over-population,” said Mr Hyland. “This was vigorously challenged!”

The opposition suggested that our focus should be on tackling treatable and preventable diseases, as climate change might not have a solution.

Chairing the event, Crispin Bonham-Carter, who is Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement), commended the boys on the quality of the debate. He announced the indicative vote from the floor was an exact draw – 68 to 68 – and noted that some boys on each side had voted against their own House.

Year 13’s Ryan Ratnam, who invigilated, congratulated all the speakers. “I was very impressed with the ‘three cruxes’ argument and the summary speech from the proposers. I also thought Broughton was a good team; there was good synergy between the two main speakers,” he said.

“Pearce made a very good point about our stance, as a developed country, being privileged. They also presented some really good information. I thought the floor contribution about over-population was intriguing.”

He described it as a very even and well-argued debate, but gave a decision to the proposing team, Broughton by two points.

Underne emerged as victors in the close-fought inter-House World Book Day quiz, defeating the boys from Stapylton on a tie-break question.

And the competition was equally ferocious among the staff teams, with some (not entirely serious) dark mutterings being heard from teachers when their own result was announced!

Simi Bloom, of Year 7, Hamza Mohamed, of Year 8, along with Year 9’s Aryan Patel and Year 10’s Amin Mohamed, formed the winning team, with Hamza first off the mark for the all-important tie-break question: Who was the poet Laureate before Simon Armitage? (Answer: Carol Ann Duffy).

The questions covered a gamut of authors from Charles Dickens to Ruta Sepetys, and from Chaucer to J K Rowling, with a special Shakespeare round included for good measure.

The House teams were joined by five staff teams and one Sixth Form team in the event held in the Main School Hall, which was organised by English teacher Panayiota Menelaou.

QE’s Head of Library Services, Surya Bowyer, paid tribute to her work and reflected on the event as a whole: “What struck me was how universal the event was. There were boys from Years 7 through to 11 in the House teams, along with teams comprising sixth-formers, teachers and non-teaching staff. It was brilliant to see how literature can be such an effective unifier. The universality of the event was reflected also in Ms Menelaou’s careful curation of the questions, which produced a real mix of niche versus populist, and ensured that every participant knew at least one answer.”

When the winning staff team of Dr Corinna Illingworth, Mr Robert Hyland, Ms Audrey Poppy and Mr Jonathan Brooke was announced, there were rumblings from other competitors. Helen MacGregor, Head of History, said: “The History department was robbed of victory! We are already in training for next year…” while Mr Bowyer added: “With Mr Hyland’s team claiming victory, there is some chatter among the staff body that perhaps the contest was fixed….” Ms Menelaou countered she had distributed the English department staff and two librarians as evenly and fairly as possible among the staff teams!

Below is a selection of the questions and answers:

1. Which two cities provide the setting for Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities?
2. Which book by Ruta Sepetys won the 2017 Carnegie book award?
3. How many Canterbury Tales were written by Chaucer?
4. Who split his soul into horcruxes?
5. Which Shakespearean play features the characters of Goneril, Regan and Cordelia?
6. Which two Shakespeare plays are translated into Klingon?

Answers

1. London and Paris
2. Salt to the Sea
3.  24
4. Voldemort
5. King Lear
6. Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing