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Year 8’s cricketers topped a highly successful season with a strong run in the Schools’ National Cup – and lost out on a semi-final place by only the narrowest of margins.

Having won the County Cup last year as Year 7s, they qualified to participate in the National Cup this year. Captained by Prayag Gandhi, the team comprehensively beat Bede’s in Sussex, needing only 13 overs to chase down their opponents’ 20-over total of 87. In the next round, having restricted Dartford Grammar School to just 38, the boys, playing at home, scored 42 runs in just 14 overs, securing their place in the quarter-finals.

Their opponents and hosts for that match – which was also the South East regional final – were the Royal Hospital School in Ipswich.

The spectators watching in the East Anglian boarding school’s historic grounds found themselves with a match to savour. The QE U13 team coach, PE and Games teacher Oliver O’Gorman, said: “It was the best and closest game of schoolboy cricket I, and many others who were present, have ever seen.”

“It went down to the last ball, with Royal Hospital needing one run off it. Unfortunately for us, they were successful,” said Mr O’Gorman. “Our boys were understandably gutted about losing in such a fashion, but they should be proud of what they have achieved in reaching the last eight in the country and coming so close to reaching the top four.” The final scores in the 30-over match were: QE 178-6; Royal Hospital 179-6.

Mr O’Gorman said the QE boys had also won praise from their hosts, Royal Hospital’s Director of Sport, Paul Hardman, and Head of Cricket, Paul Cohen: “They were very complimentary of both the standard of our boys’ cricket, but also the way in which they represented the School throughout the day.”

The boys have enjoyed a 100 per cent success rate in their regular, competitive fixture list. They beat:

• Berkhamsted School, by 9 wickets
• St Albans School, by 10 wickets
• The John Lyon School, by 10 wickets
• Watford Grammar School, by 7 wickets
• Highgate School, by 118 runs
• St Benedict’s School, by 129 runs.

They also had a strong run in this year’s County Cup, beating Greenford High School and Mill Hill & Belmont Schools, before losing to Avanti House in the semi-final.

The squad for the South-East Final was:

1. Prayag Gandhi (captain)
2. Ranvir Sinha
3. Bilal Hassan
4. Rishab Banerjee
5. Karan Chauhan (Year 7)
6. Kush Tailor (wicketkeeper)
7. Ugan Pretheshan
8. Krish Agarwal
9. Rohan Belavadi
10. Girish Radhakrishnan (Year 7)
11. Vishnu Anil
12. Aaryan Patel
13. Madhav Menon

At this year’s final of a prestigious national business and accountancy competition, a QE Sixth Form team picked up prizes for teamwork, integrity and commercial acumen.

Karanvir Singh Kumar, Yash Shah, Harshil Shah and Manas Madan competed alongside 47 other school teams at the final of the BASE competition run by ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) in Birmingham.

The competition provides school and college students with a taste of what working in the profession is really like, requiring them to approach business decisions as if they were Chartered Accountants.

The boys enjoyed a three-course dinner and overnight stay at the Hilton Hotel. But next the work began: after an early breakfast, the team received their briefing information at 9.00am and then had only two hours in which to make their decisions and prepare their final presentation for the judges.

The QE boys’ challenge was to choose which of three options would be of most benefit to Ghanaian villages: to invest in equipment for farming the cassava root vegetable, in a warehouse or in solar panels.

Team leader Karanvir said: “We had to consider how we would finance the venture and which sponsor we would choose. Throughout our analysis we also had to consider ethics and demonstrate integrity – key qualities of Chartered Accountants.”

“We had a stressful two hours to prepare our presentation. First, we made sense of the case studies. Then we began to write our scripts and made our PowerPoint presentation. We chose to recommend investment in solar panels because of its potential to transform the lives of the local population and to enhance the socio-economic development of the country.”

After the two hours were up, the 48 teams were split into smaller groups of 5-6 teams to present to the judges.

Although they QE did not win the overall title, they did take the trio of additional prizes.

“The experience stretched our abilities to the maximum and tested our skills like no other challenge we have faced before,” said Karanvir. “The time pressure was especially overwhelming from the onset. I’m extremely proud of what we achieved as a team, and the hard work and dedication paid off. This was particularly so when we were awarded the prize for Business & Commercial Acumen, which was given to us for our out-of-the box thinking and awareness of real-world events.”

A QE Sixth Form team competes this week in the finals of a new international STEM education competition after impressing judges with their plans to use technology in the struggle to protect endangered animals.

They will be up against teams from all over the world competing to show how drones could be deployed to conserve species threatened with extinction.

The boys brought in advanced Mathematics and used 3D printing and complex electronics in developing their entry proposal and making their own glider drone.

The finals of the International STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Youth Innovation Competition are being held at the Royal Air Force Museum, in London.

Head of Technology Michael Noonan said: “I am proud of the team and of the hard work they have put into this competition. From the initial selection of animal species to the creation of the report and to the development of the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] according to their designs, it was all the result of the team’s own little-by-little exploration and progression.”

The competition is organised by the British International Education Association (BIEA). Run for the first time last year, it was open only to British pupils, attracting entries from more than 2,000 schools. This year, it has been opened up to schools from around the world.

The 2019 theme is Fighting extinction using drone technology. There is a first prize of £5,000 for the team with the highest overall score.

QE’s team, who are all from Year 12, are in the 15-17 year-old age category. The team comprises: Tarun Bhaskaran, Ben Domb, Deeps Gandhi, Aryan Jain and Simon Sherriff.

The team initially drew up a long list of endangered animals and explored the role drones could play in protecting them. As a result of these discussions, they decided to develop glider drones.

For their choice of subject, they wanted an animal with a large distribution area, so picked the black rhinoceros. Further research followed, as a result of which the team embraced military surveillance techniques to monitor black rhino populations effectively, while also using a complex equation to calculate the appropriate pixel resolution for the final design.

They decided to build the required drone themselves. This meant they could show off their ideas to best effect, but naturally made the process more challenging.

To meet this challenge, the team divided themselves into three sections and worked separately before coming together to provide the finished entry. One group was responsible for electronics, another for the video and a third for the fuselage. The electronics group focused on providing the control system and system compatibility; the video group made the video submission, wrote scripts, arranged 3D printing and coordinated the budget, and the fuselage group designed the chassis and structure of the drone.

The competition’s final deadline coincided with School examinations. This left the boys with some tricky time-management issues, which they resolved by drawing up a detailed division of work, all carefully scheduled outside of examination study time. The 14-hour days paid off when they duly submitted the report on time and then heard that they were among the finalists.

A group of Year 8 boys are on a mission to get national backing for a campaign to regulate the use of trans fats in takeaway food.

They were inspired to launch their campaign following a presentation by Yinka Thomas, a nutritionist from Barnet Public Health, about the dangers of sugar and trans fats in the modern diet. The boys were so shocked by what they learned that they decided to take action to raise awareness.

And their campaign is fast gaining attention in high places: six of the 12 campaigning boys were invited to Whitehall to put their case to the Head of the Government’s Obesity Policy Unit, Richard Sangster.

After seeing their presentation, Mr Sangster told them: “That was the best presentation I’ve heard in a long time and was better than many I’ve heard here at the Department of Health. You showed the dangers of trans fats better than in any public health presentation I’ve seen.” He also commented on the boys’ nuanced arguments, confidence and ability to work together as a team.

The 12 boys began their campaign by writing letters to a number of public bodies, including the British Heart Foundation, the NCD Alliance, the World Heart Federation and the Faculty of Public Health. They then pulled their research together and approached the Department of Health asking for an opportunity to present their findings, and were duly invited in.

They put together a presentation stating the existing health risks of trans fats, which are usually found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, and the benefits already seen in countries such as Denmark, which have banned or restricted their use. The Food Without Trans Fat! (Food WTF) team are calling for a mandatory use of healthier alternatives, such as rapeseed oil, for cooking in fast food and takeaway restaurants.

One of the group, Avy Batra, said: “We had not realised that one portion of chips fried in AVR60 – the best-selling partially hydrogenated oil – contains 10g of trans fat. Hundreds of thousands of young people, especially secondary students, are consuming these on a regular basis, either on the way back from school or when they go out with friends, putting themselves at risk of developing heart disease and other serious illnesses in the future.”

Head of Year 8, Rosie Hall, who accompanied the group to the Department of Health, along with Ms Thomas, said: “The boys delivered an engaging and convincing argument about the dangers of trans fats, particularly AVR60 in fast foods. They took props to show how much fat was going into a person’s body if they ate two bags of chips every week, something which many school pupils and young people do.”

Mr Sangster, who was the lead author of the Government Childhood Obesity Policy published last year, discussed with the boys the paucity of data on the consumption of trans fats. While he was unable to offer any funding for their campaign, he was happy to back the campaign’s message.

Mr Sangster also mentioned the National Food Strategy (NFS) being put together by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). The boys’ next step will be to try to arrange a meeting with Henry Dimbleby, who is leading the NFS as the lead non-executive board member of DEFRA.

Ms Thomas, who met with the team several times to give them additional information and advice, said: “I was so impressed with the boys’ presentation. They should be so proud of their achievement – and hopefully energised going forward.”

The six boys who presented their findings to Mr Sangster were Avy Batra, Giuseppe Cipponeri ,Tharun Dhamodharan, Ugan Pretheshan, Krishna Shrivastava and Khapilash Sritharan. The remaining team members are Theo Abraham, Rayan Choudhury, Omar Siddick, Siddharth Sridhar, Kevin Sureshkumar and Dharun Thambiayah.

From how to support people who are coming out to understanding transgender transitioning, the School’s new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Ambassadors covered key themes during activities marking Pride month.

The trio of ambassadors, all drawn from Year 12, used a spectrum of material to communicate with fellow pupils in an age-appropriate and accessible way.

Josh Osman, Vithusan Kuganathan and Leo Kucera promoted better understanding of LGBTQ during Personal Development Time sessions, using PowerPoint presentations and encouraging questions in Q&As. As well as updating the dedicated equality, diversity & inclusion noticeboard, they put up posters around the School, while a rainbow flag was hung in Café 1573. They also sold Pride ribbons at the Founder’s Day fête.

For Year 7 & 8 boys, in addition to a discussion session exploring how young LGBT people might feel, the ambassadors ran a poster competition. The entrants could choose as their theme any of the Equality Act-protected characteristics (age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation). Josh said: “We were very pleased with both the level of participation and the quality of the submissions. There were many excellent entries.” The best entries are being displayed on the noticeboard.

For the older boys, there were lessons on challenging stereotypes and understanding the different ways gender is thought about around the world (Year 9), on promoting a better understanding of the transgender aspect of LGBTQ and, particularly, of transitioning (Year 10), and on the ‘dos and don’ts’ of what to say if someone were to come out to you (Year 12).

Since being appointed earlier this year, the three ambassadors have celebrated International Women’s Day at the School and launched the noticeboard. Their next big event is planned for Black History Month in October.

Speaking about their roles, and their work overall to date, Vithusan said: “We are looking to make these issues clearer to younger years – to teach these values.” Leo added: “This is part of the School’s ‘confident, able and responsible’ mission. It is about changes in society and reflecting that. Others in Year 12 have helped, which is great, as these things shouldn’t just be left to the School’s hierarchy. As students we are more relatable to the younger students – we’ve been in their shoes not long ago.”

All three boys stressed the importance and value of student leadership. Josh said: “It is such an important role. We are a very traditional School in many ways, but we’re here to prove the School is progressive. We are setting a foundation for the future of diversity at QE. We are still finding what we can do; our job is to create the mould for ambassadors to build upon in future years.”