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Having swept all before them at the UK national VEX Robotics finals, a record four junior teams set off for the world championships in Kentucky, together with a newly formed senior team.

And great as their achievement was in qualifying for the world championships, there were still greater triumphs to come, as the junior (IQ) teams picked up a string of awards, with one of them – Technogear – becoming the first-ever UK team to reach the Teamwork Challenge finals, held in the 20,000-seater Freedom Hall.

This year’s competitors were building on the success of 2018, when the awards won in Kentucky by QE included the first-ever world title – the Excellence Award – to be won by a UK school.

QE’s Head of Technology Michael Noonan, who accompanied the boys to the US this year, said afterwards: “Although Technogear narrowly missed out on an overall podium finish, this couldn’t detract from their high spirits, nor from the immense pride felt by mentors, VEX UK staff and members of other UK teams in their incredible achievement in winning their division and reaching the Teamwork Challenge finals.

“All the QE students felt that their experiences in Louisville, the Kentucky Exposition Center and the Freedom hall were once-in-a-lifetime,” added Mr Noonan, who had himself earlier been crowned Teacher of the Year at the VEX Robotics UK national finals in Telford. “Having paused to enjoy the rollercoasters and fun of the Kentucky Kingdom amusement park, they have already started planning for next year!”

Mr Noonan also asked Technogear drivers Yash Shah and Anubhav Rathore how they felt while they were waiting for the final results to come in. “This is the best day of my life. I don’t care if we win or not; this experience alone has been incredible, and incredibly beats that of winning the Excellence Award last year!” said Yash, while Anubhav expressed similar sentiments: “It doesn’t really matter if we win or not. Just getting here, to meet all of these people from around the world and share our experiences and make new friendships, is reward enough.”

The QE teams’ path to Kentucky was confirmed after their barnstorming performances at the national finals in Telford in March. Eight teams (three from the senior EDR competition, for pupils in Years 10–13 and five IQ teams, for Years 5-9) competed: the EDR teams were APEX, Cobra and HYBRID; the IQ teams were Gearsquad, Hyperdrive, ECHO, Technogear and Supercharge.

“After a tough first day, all three EDR teams were excellently placed for qualification, with HYBRID and APEX in particular in commanding positions,” said Mr Noonan. In the later stages, however, the EDR teams found the competition tough. Nevertheless, Team Cobra won the Innovate Award, when “their unusual ‘side-shooting’ design caught the judges’ eye”. It was HYBRID, however, who came away with the top prize – the overall Excellence Award. This, Mr Noonan said, was “for a terrific performance in all aspects of the competition, ranging from judging interviews and coding an efficient autonomous routine to overall performance in the teamwork championship”. This award sealed the team’s entry to the world championships for the second year running.

Starting a day later, the IQ competitors were spurred on by the success of their older Elizabethan counterparts. “There was an air of trepidation amongst the Queen Elizabeth’s IQ teams when they arrived at Telford, as the British season leading up to these finals had been highly competitive, and the teams had never found it as difficult to accrue regional awards. However, it was clear from the outset that the teams from Barnet were intent on changing that fact, with some of the highest scores of the day set right from the outset by Gearsquad (30, 28) and Supercharge (27).”

In the final rounds at Telford, “the greatest shock of the entire competition” occurred, when a pairing of QE’s ECHO with a team from Highgate School scored 38 points, thus setting a new UK record and equalling the current world record.

The last day ended in triumph for QE, with IQ teams from the School taking first, second and third places in the Teamwork competition and also winning the Skills championship. In addition: ECHO and Supercharge both won an Amaze Award; Gearsquad won the Build Award; Hyperdrive won the Judges Award, and Technogear took both the Sportsmanship and Design awards. Four IQ teams qualified for the world finals in Louisville – ECHO, Gearsquad, Supercharge and Technogear.

At EDR level, examination commitments meant that some of the HYBRID team were unable to make the trip to Kentucky, so boys from the APEX team were drafted in as replacements. “As if competing against 600 of the world’s finest teams (the equivalent of the top 1%) was not enough of a challenge, the prospect of forming a new team with just one month to go added to the overall difficulty,” said Mr Noonan.

On arrival in Louisville, after enjoying the ceremonial Parade of Nations, the new team threw themselves enthusiastically into the inter-team co-operation that is an important facet of VEX Robotics. “The students made their way to competition on the first day and began to strategise (sometimes in Mandarin and Spanish) with other teams from around the globe.”

After a successful first day of practice, day two brought mixed fortunes – won 2, lost 2 – and day three brought a three-game losing streak after an initial victory. “To their immense credit, they rallied and recorded two excellent wins in their final two games, finishing with a 5-6 win:loss ratio. “The students were not despondent but proud of their efforts, especially when the judges bestowed the Service Award on the team, recognising their efforts both in mentoring younger teams in school and in the technology ‘Showcase.’ This represents the first award won by this school at EDR level in the World Championships.”

With its record contingent at IQ level, QE contributed to the general excitement felt among the UK teams. “Having attended the World Championships last year, Technogear were well placed to pass on their experience of the event to their less-experienced school mates, and an overall great air of co-operation was evident amongst the QE teams,” said Mr Noonan.

Initial results were patchy, with ECHO’s 30 points the highlight. On the second day, Gearsquad battled through some tough fixtures before combining with girls from The Henrietta Barnett School to finish the day with “a fantastic 38”. Mr Noonan said: “As day two closed, the QE teams were ranked in or around the top 20, with the exception of Technogear, who were temporarily languishing at 59th.”

Day three saw Technogear bounce back in style: “Paired with Dragon Tech. from California (an early favourite for world glory), they equalled the world record with a seismic 41 points!” – a performance that led to their ranking instantly soaring to 15th. “No doubt inspired by their actions, all the other QE teams opened in similarly strong fashion.”

From that position, all the QE teams could theoretically have gone on to qualify for the final stages, but for ECHO, Gearsquad and Supercharge, it was not to be, although ECHO were able to take solace in an extremely strong season which left them ranked as the world’s 19th highest team for skills.

Paired once again with Dragon Tech., Technogear continued to score highly. In the middle match of the divisional final, their 40-point tally proved decisive. “The nervous wait watching the remaining final games of the division proved difficult for Technogear and the Queen Elizabeth’s teams, but ultimately their score stood, and they were crowned champions of the Arts Division: they were heading to the World Teamwork Finals in the 20,000 seater-Freedom Hall and a worldwide audience of many thousands on the livestream!”

Once in this daunting arena, where the huge audience included the other QE teams and staff, “the cool and collected demeanour” of both Technogear and their Californian allies was impressive, Mr Noonan reported. They were, he said, perhaps unfortunate to score only 33 after a valiant battle on the competition floor. “This left QE in 3rd place, and with a chance of the podium, but ultimately the final two would outscore them, leaving Technogear in fifth place.”

Technogear not only won a Champions Trophy for winning their division, but also took an Innovate Award. Supercharge picked up the Build Award for their division, while Gearsquad picked up the Sportsmanship Award. This was just reward for Gearsquad’s “fantastic attitude”, Mr Noonan reported – an attitude reflected in the comments of Gearsquad team member Darren Lee: “We said that we’d congratulate our drivers and our partners’ drivers after every game, regardless of whether we set a world record or had a tough score to take, and that proved to be the best part of the experience.”

During the trip, the QE boys took the opportunity to see attractions including the picturesque Waterfront Park, the Muhammad Ali Museum and the Louisville Slugger baseball bat factory, while also enjoying the spectacle of a baseball game between the local Louisville Bats and the Durham Bulls.

• The EDR teams at the national finals were:
  • APEX – Nirmay Jadhav, Swattik Das, Ansh Jaiswal, Siddh Patel, George Sewell and Lucas Lu, all from Year 10
  • Cobra – Jimmy Ou, Leo Yang, Akram Ahmad and Mahdi Dhirani, all from Year 12
  • HYBRID – Dillan Shah, of Year 10; Alex Woodcock, of Year 10; Kayan Intwala, of Year 10; Deshraam Ganeshamoorthy, of Year 11; James Tan, of Year 11; Daniel Radzik-Rahman, of Year 11, and Devin Karia, of Year 11.
• The IQ teams were:
  • Gearsquad – Niyam Shah, Jai Akilesh Kaza Venkata, Darren Lee, Nathan Woodcock and Dipesh Dhavala, all from Year 8
  • Hyperdrive – Shivam Singh, Aadarsh Aggarwal, Ashish Yeruva, Aarush Verma, Vedant Shah, Maxwell Johnson and Varun Srirambhatla, all from Year 8
  • ECHO – Heemy Kalam, Bhunit Santhiramouselan, Indy Potluri, Akhil Walia and Abhiraj Singh, all from Year 9
  • Technogear – Dylan Domb, Yash Shah, Anubhav Rathore, Ashwin Sridhar and Anish Rana, all from Year 9
  • Supercharge – Arya Bhatt, Pranav Chawla, Raghav Rajaganesh, Chakshu Chopra, Frank Zhang, all from Year 9.

Old Elizabethan George Mpanga has achieved unprecedented success – including winning the main Podcast of the Year title – in the British Podcast Awards.

George the Poet’s eight-part podcast, entitled Have you heard George’s podcast?, creatively combines music, drama, news and poetry. It won a record four golds alongside the main prize, as well as two silvers.

There was reward, too, for another QE alumnus, Bilal Harry Khan (OE 2003–2010). Over the Bridge, a podcast Bilal makes with three black and mixed-race friends he met while studying at Cambridge, won bronze in the Acast Moment of the Year category. Bilal took the time to congratulate his fellow Elizabethan, George, on his success via Twitter.

In his acceptance speech at the ceremony attended by celebrities including Fearne Cotton and Michael Sheen, George (OE 2002–2009) said the podcast was “something I was itching for for a long time when I was in the music industry, prior to that when I was just in the streets, just a rapper, and I knew that there was so much wrong that needed to be unpacked”.

He paid tribute to his parents, who were in the audience, as well as thanking others, including his community and his ancestors.

Speaking afterwards, George told the BBC that he first established the podcast because he “wanted to give young people a way to rethink their situation, especially if they’re in the inner city like I was”.

The judges’ citation for the Audioboom Podcast of the Year prize stated: “This podcast showed a level of creativity and craft that was impressive. Alongside it, the entry displayed well-thought-through story-telling which ensured a compelling listen. George the Poet has succeeded in challenging the notion of what can be achieved through podcasting.”

George also won gold in the following categories:

• Best Arts & Culture: “This is a podcast that deserves your time. It felt a little like a piece of art itself – pushing the boundaries of podcast production,” the judges wrote.
• Best Fiction: “The judges felt that Have You Heart George’s Podcast? exceeded all our expectations. It is an engrossing podcast: fresh, original, surprising, moving, well-written with breathtakingly beautiful sound design and mesmerising performances. An outstanding and worthy winner.”
• Best New Podcast: “The judges were impressed with this exceptional, unusual podcast’s bravery and invention. This podcast is unlike anything else out there. It moves between fiction, fact, poetry and reportage to create a new and unforgettable listening experience.”
• Smartest Podcast: “This podcast captures a unique and powerful voice and views which are so often missing from mainstream media. Using arresting poetry to tackle big issues head on, each episode is a rich and mesmerising performance.”

The silvers were in the Acast Moment of the Year and Best Current Affairs categories.

Among the topics covered in George’s series were the Grenfell Tower fire, the 2011 London riots, whether music causes crime and the glamorisation of violence.

In her report on the awards for the Guardian, Miranda Sawyer highlighted not only that George eschewed the predictable and included some surprising ‘takes’, but also praised the podcast’s use of music (“treated with the respect it deserves”) and the “properly high quality” sound design, complete with “muffled phone chat, voice-note pings, computer key taps moving in and around the voices”.

Queen Elizabeth’s School consistently sends more pupils to Russell Group universities than any other school in the country, new Government figures reveal.

The Department for Education analysed data showing how many Year 13 leavers went to the group of 24 leading UK universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, over the past three years. It found that QE came out on top, ahead of other selective schools such as The Henrietta Barnett School, The Tiffin Girls’ School in Kingston upon Thames and Colchester Royal Grammar School.

According to the DfE analysis, 78 per cent of the 421 boys who left QE over the past three years have gone on to study at Russell Group universities.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “We are pleased at this independent corroboration of the success of our boys in securing places at some of the UK’s best universities, particularly since the three-year period of measurement underlines that this was no ‘one-off’ related to an exceptional year.

“It is a reflection both of the hard work of the pupils and of the strength of our programmes to help boys through the university application process: these programmes offer our boys extensive support and are also highly tailored to specific needs.

“It should be noted, however, that, impressive though these figures are, they do not tell the whole story. They do not include, for example, the small but growing number of our boys applying to, and winning places at, top universities in the US, such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford.

“Neither do they include those boys who go to respected UK universities which, for historical reasons, do not belong to the Russell Group, such as Bath, Loughborough and St Andrews, nor those who take up places on highly regarded, specialised degree courses elsewhere.”

Founded in 1994, the Russell Group comprises universities that are research-intensive institutions with a reputation for academic achievement. They include leading universities from England, Scotland and Wales.

Having graduated from Cambridge, Bilal Harry Khan (OE 2003 – 2010) is now back in Barnet forging a career focused on engaging young people with voluntary service in their own communities.

Bilal left QE to take up a place at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, to read Theology and Religious Studies. He then joined CommUNITY Barnet, previously Barnet’s Voluntary Service Council, where he is a Youth Engagement Officer.

At the age of just 22, he already has a track-record of initiating and promoting volunteering opportunities for young people in the Barnet area and is hoping his role will enable him to reconnect with the School and find volunteering opportunities for current pupils.

Notably, Bilal helped launch the recent Give & Get Given project, which successfully provided one-off opportunities for young people to undertake tasks such as gardening, painting and befriending in the communities in which they lived. ““The whole aim of the project was to show young people the benefits of volunteering and that it can be fun. It was great to see them recognising the value of their contribution to voluntary-sector organisations,” he says.

“We offered all the participants guidance through a briefing session into what voluntary work entailed and also gave them speakers or headphones and a special t-shirt as a reward for their efforts,” said Bilal.

Bilal oversees Youth Shield, Barnet’s safeguarding panel for those aged 14-25, which has won awards for its consultation work within the borough. The panel reports monthly to Barnet’s Safeguarding Children’s Board.

“We are currently working on the delivery of a peer-to-peer workshop on healthy relationships, which will cover topics such as recognising the signs of domestic abuse and violence in teenage relationships. We’re always looking for new members and the Youth Shield offers an exciting opportunity for young people to make a difference,” says Bilal.

Bilal’s responsibilities include working on the council’s Participation & Children’s Voice programme, which involves substantial consultation with primary, secondary and college-age children and young people. The aim is to develop child-centred services in the community; Bilal ensures that young people’s views are fed back to Barnet’s Youth Participation Strategy Group.

Following the award of funding from Public Health England (an executive agency of the Department of Health), Bilal is also now working to deliver a project looking at self-harm, including the role of social media in it.

A dozen final-year QE boys won medals in the 51st Chemistry Olympiad, with one, Kiran Aberdeen, selected to go through to the élite competition’s second round, hosted by Cambridge University.

In the first round of the Royal Society of Chemistry competition, five QE pupils were awarded gold medals, which went to just 8% of the 7,036 entrants nationwide. A further seven took silver, which went to 25% of participants across the country.

Chemistry teacher Elizabeth Kuo said: “The Olympiad is the UK’s leading secondary school-age competition in our subject and is designed to stretch even the brightest, so all our medal-winners did very well.

“To reach round 2, as Kiran did, represents an exceptional performance, because only the top 30 highest-scoring students nationally are invited to take part. So, although in the end he missed out on selection for the final four representing the UK at the International Chemistry Olympiad, he nevertheless deserves to be heartily congratulated on his achievement.” Kiran is pictured in the front row, centre.

Run annually, the Olympiad aims to develop creative thinking, and help pupils apply their existing knowledge in new and interesting contexts.

Round 1 involves a written test of chemical knowledge, based on real-world chemistry problems, and is sat in school.

The second round at Cambridge is held over a long weekend and features lessons and demonstrations on new topics from respected academics, teachers and technicians, followed by theoretical and practical tests.

• The gold medal-winners were: Kiran Aberdeen; Kishan Patel; Binu Perera; Essam Rama, and Tharunkumar Muthu Gurunath. Silver medals went to: Bashmy Basheer; Aashish Khimasia; Shiva Pingle; Varun Wignarajah; Tharshan Sriskantha; Rawan Ebrahim, and Mukund Murali. All medal-winners were from Year 13.