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Actions speak louder than mere words on a page – as a theatre group proved when they visited QE to perform two plays from the GCSE English syllabus and lead workshops on them.

The company, Say Two Productions, performed Romeo and Juliet for Year 11, before putting on J B Priestley’s early 20th-century classic, An Inspector Calls, for the whole of Year 10.

In each case they first set the context of the play, then performed it using the respective playwright’s original language.

Head of English Robert Hyland said: “The workshops served as revision sessions, with these plays being key course texts. Our visitors’ fun and engaging delivery refreshed minds about both the plot and the key issues of the plays.”

Say Two Productions design a bespoke experience based on the School’s requirements.

After performing Romeo and Juliet themselves, they engaged the boys in some acting, getting them involved in the action, characterisation and themes of the play. Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet in northern Italy, and mainly the city of Verona, during the Renaissance.

Following the performance of An Inspector Calls, Say Two Productions conducted a ‘hot-seat’ question-&-answer session – that is, answering the boys’ questions whilst still in character. This helped the boys understand the viewpoint and motivations of the different characters in the three-act play, which was first performed in 1945, but is set in 1912 in Brumley, a fictional English manufacturing town.

At the heart of An Inspector Calls is Priestley’s exposure of the hypocrisies of Edwardian English society and his highlighting of class injustice. Shakespeare’s tragedy centres on two young “star-cross’d lovers” whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families.

“With Shakespeare, sometimes seeing and hearing the text delivered helps to contextualise it and highlight how relevant the play remains thematically today. It was a good opportunity for some of the boys to immerse themselves in the play by participating in the action,” Mr Hyland added.

Fifty sixth-formers enjoyed an entertaining day getting to grips with Mathematics that ranged from the offbeat and entertaining to applications that were literally out of this world.

The Year 12 pupils headed off to the Royal Institution in central London for Maths Fest 2019 – a Mathematics festival for schools designed to inculcate a passion for the subject among young people. The event is the brainchild of mathematicians and speakers Matt Parker and Rob Eastaway.

Accompanying the Sixth Form mathematicians were Mathematics teachers Joelle Simpson and Karmen Chiu. Mrs Simpson said: “All in all, the day was a fantastic trip out for the Year 12s; whilst they did know much of the Maths discussed, it was then applied to fun and interesting real-life examples, and there were also many new mathematical concepts introduced.”

First up was the host, Matt Parker, who entertained the students by asking a member of the audience to pick any two-digit number. He then proceeded to fill a 4×4 grid with each row, column, the four corners and each 2×2 square adding up to the two-digit number.

Science presenter Steve Mould then showed the audience 2D and 3D shapes of constant width that are not circles or spheres, before somewhat precariously riding a skateboard to demonstrate how easily he could slide along with these unique shapes. His most famous discovery is “self-siphoning beads”; a string of metal beads strung together on a chain, which, when released from its container, seems to defy gravity and move upwards before falling to the ground.

Joint host Rob Eastaway talked about Pascal’s Triangle (a triangular arrangement of numbers in which each number is the sum of the pair of numbers directly above it) and finding the ‘true centre’ of odd shapes. QE pupil Adam Hassan said: “Rob Eastaway’s lecture showed how we often make assumptions that are completely wrong, and sometimes the correct answer is the one that you would least expect it to be.”

Astronomer Lucie Green discussed the sun – Ishveer Sanghera commented that he particularly enjoyed her application of Mathematics to the solar system, including calculating how much longer the sun would burn for.

Oxford applied mathematician David Acheson made an “hilarious video” on finding pi using equipment found around his home, Miss Chiu reported. He talked about vibrations and nodes on strings, before ending the day with a “fantastic solo on his electric guitar”. Pupil Karan Patel also enjoyed this lecture, “especially the maths behind the snowball’s radius increasing at a decreasing rate, as well as the pizza box experiment”.

Other QE boys enjoying the day included: Suleman Yusuf, who relished Matt Parker’s “insightful” exploration of the world of puzzles; Shangeay Senathirajah, who praised a “truly eye-opening experience” which showed how Mathematics is useful in day-to-day life, and Alejandro Lynch Gonzalez, who appreciated learning about areas of the subject not covered by the Mathematics curriculum.

Two Old Elizabethan friends have teamed up for the annual charity ‘jailbreak’ run by the Oxford University Student Union.

Conor Mellon (OE 2010-2017) and Rohan Radia (also 2010-2017) will be heading out of Oxford on 9th March and will then have 36 hours to get as far away from the city as they can without spending any money. Their purpose is to raise as much money as possible for the RAG (Raise and Give) charities.

On their fundraising page, the pair state: “We will be hitchhiking, charming, and busking (?!) our way on to boats, trains and planes in our effort to beat the other teams and escape from Oxford! Rohan will use his excellent interpersonal skills and awkward humour along the way and Conor will contribute rusty French, rudimentary German, and a healthy dose of positivity. We have never attempted anything like this before and are excited to give it a crack.”

Last year’s competitors reached such far-flung destinations as Sweden, Turkey and even Malaysia.
Jailbreak is one of the biggest fundraisers for the student union’s adopted charities. These currently include:

• Education Partnerships Africa, which works with schools in Uganda and Kenya, providing material resources and extra-curricular activities to help young students
• Aspire Oxford, a social enterprise that helps homeless and disadvantaged people in Oxford secure employment and housing
• The Porch, which helps Oxford’s homeless single and vulnerably housed adults towards more positive lifestyles
• IntoUniversity, which provides local learning centres supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds as they attain university places or pursue other aspirations.

“Ultimately we’re doing this to raise money for the fantastic charities that RAG supports,” the pair state. “100% of donations go to these charities…so please help them by donating! Thanks.”

Conor, who went to Lincoln College to read History and German, has been working for the university’s History Society this term and has invited young historians from QE along to hear outspoken historian David Starkey deliver a talk in March.

Rohan, who went to Oxford to study History and Economics at Somerville College, last year co-led a team of five students working to help the university’s Careers Service establish compliance with recycling policy.

In the previous academic year, Rohan had served on The Oxford Union’s Secretary’s Committee.

• To donate, go to https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/route7

Visiting expert Gabriella Rutherford not only helped boys understand the threats and challenges faced by tribal people around the world, but also encouraged them to reflect on lives that are different from – and sometimes surprisingly similar to – their own.

Gabriella, from Survival International, the global organisation championing tribal peoples’ rights, spoke at a Lower School lecture assembly. She focused on the challenges facing tribal people around the world and encouraged the boys to think about ‘otherness’.

She looked at how our conceptions of other people and groups are often based on the ways in which we believe they are different to us. She asked the boys to picture a tribal person in their mind. Establishing the sort of image that is often conjured up – a jungle environment, spears, feathers and bare chests – she looked into where that image comes from. She then pointed out that while such tribes do exist, there are others that look and live more like us than we might imagine, particularly among contacted tribes with whom there has been cultural and economic exchange.

Gabriella touched on the ongoing threats to tribal people from racism and prejudice, and from those who advocate taking control of their lands in the public or national interest – as, she said, President Bolsonaro is hinting at in Brazil.

Head of Academic Enrichment Nisha Mayer said: “This was an engaging assembly, which required the boys to consider and voice their own ideas.

“One aspect of our lecture programme is that, through it, we seek to encourage boys to think critically about people with different life experiences, understanding their value and the challenges they face. This assembly raised awareness of a particular set of issues and got boys engaged in the moral questions around the cultures and the treatment of tribal peoples in different parts of the world.”

Topics covered during the assembly included:

• What tribal people need to survive. (Their own land and self-determination are key elements, Gabriella stated);
• The dangers associated with outside contact, including the people losing control over resources and also their lack of immunity to viruses and other illnesses. Some 50–90% of tribal communities are typically wiped out following outside human contact;
• The benefits brought by tribal people and communities. They often constitute very strong communities; and 80% of the world’s biodiversity is located in tribal land, so they are hugely important for conservation;
• Whether there is ever justification for the outside world making contact with an uncontacted tribe.

On the final point, Survival International’s view is that there really is no such justification, since: it is impossible for us, as outsiders, to assess the harm that we might be doing; since tribal peoples have human rights, just as we do, and these should not be forfeited to some notion of the ‘public good’; and since they are equipped to deal with problems in their own ways, even if these ways are different from ours.

Gabriella encouraged boys to consider getting involved in the Survival International Youth Action Group that is being established.

The international migrant crisis in southern Europe may have faded from the headlines in recent months, but the humanitarian challenge remains, Old Elizabethan Nicholas Millet reminded QE boys when he returned to his alma mater.

Nick (OE 2001–2008) co-founded Refugee Education Chios, which provides education, support and training for teenagers and young adults living on the Greek island of Chios, which became a de facto detention centre after the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement.

The project offers safe places – a youth centre and a learning centre – outside the Vial detention camp, reaching up to 250 children and youth aged up to 22 each week. Both centres tailor their work to the refugees’ particular needs, with, for example, the learning centre offering a trauma-sensitive curriculum and the youth centre helping teenagers develop trusting relationships and confidence in their own abilities and skills.

He spoke to boys in the middle years of QE about the charity’s work and about the migrant crisis in general, highlighting the ongoing nature of the problem, which, he said, was all too easily forgotten.

Thanking him for his visit, Head of Academic Enrichment Nisha Mayer said afterwards: “Nick provided an enormously insightful and, at times, emotional talk, which was a good reminder of the importance of being involved with humanitarian causes.”

Nick first got involved in the refugee relief work before the 2016 agreement came into force. Inspired to take action to help refugees by a weekend visit to the ‘Jungle’ camp at Calais, he put his successful career as a management consultant on hold and flew to Chios, which lies just 7km off the mainland of Turkey.

The island was the arrival point for the highest number of refugees after Lesbos, with up to 1,500 men, women and children making the journey across the Aegean Sea every night at that time. During his talk, Nick showed the boys photographs of refugees arriving on Chios, often in perilously overloaded rubber dinghies. Other images revealed the poor conditions in the camp.

Nick, of Stanmore, has a history of involvement in humanitarian projects. Shortly after leaving QE, he spent time at the Sri Sathya Sai School – a village school in Kerala, India, which QE has supported since 2002. And, while he was reading for the Politics, Psychology and Sociology Tripos at Cambridge, he undertook research for the Grameen Bank, the Nobel Prize-winning microfinance organisation based in Bangladesh which works to help the poor.

On his most recent visit to QE, Nick mentioned especially the desperate plight of lone child refugees, telling the boys: “Children are sent because their parents can’t afford for the whole family to escape.”