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Year 10’s Richard Bai has reached the regional round of a London-wide schools speaking competition.

Richard, who spoke about the power of reading, won the QE round, which was contested after Year 10 boys had learned some public-speaking skills during a Jack Petchey “Speak Out” Challenge! workshop run at the School led by a visiting speaker.

The other finalists were: Sarvesh Sabale, speaking about allergies and how to support those with them; Dillan Shah, speaking about video game addiction, and Om Deshpande, who spoke about practice versus procrastination.

Richard goes on to the Barnet Regional Final at Copthall School. After that, the semi-final takes place at the Speakers Trust’s offices in central London on 20th May, before the grand final at the Cambridge Theatre in London’s West End on 1st July 2019.

The challenge, which is a programme run by Speakers Trust and funded by the Jack Petchey Foundation, aims to give people the skills, confidence and desire to speak in public. It is open to schools across London and Essex. Speakers Trust is the UK’s leading public speaking and communication skills training charity, while the foundation was set up by businessman and philanthropist Sir Jack Petchey, who is still working at the age of 93.

The workshop at the School centred on how to be an effective public speaker. In the subsequent competition, the boys spoke on a subject close to their heart.

Supervising the workshop were Head of Year 10 Simon Walker and Extra-curricular Enrichment Tutor Keith Bugler, both of whom said they were delighted by how well the boys had risen to the challenge.

New research highlights the success of grammar schools in sending large numbers of pupils from black and minority ethnic backgrounds to top universities.

The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) study shows not only that students of all backgrounds are much more likely to progress to a top-tier university if they have been educated in an area with grammar schools, but that this is particularly true for those from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds.

Its publication comes as the magazine of King’s College, Cambridge, reports on Old Elizabethan George the Poet’s key role in the college’s first-ever open day for BME applicants. The magazine explains that although King’s accepts a relatively high number of state school pupils, it remains concerned about the ethnic diversity level among its student body.

Nationally renowned spoken-word performer and social commentator George Mpanga (OE 2002–2009), who himself attended King’s, led an empowerment session for the visiting prospective undergraduates. He told them how his time at Cambridge helped him understand the inner-city community he had come from, giving him an academically-based perspective which has informed his subsequent commentary on race, education and class.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “At Queen Elizabeth’s School, we are proud of our long-term success as an entirely meritocratic institution, and it is noteworthy that many of our leavers, such as George, who go on to Oxford and Cambridge are from modest backgrounds, often representing the first generation of their families to go into higher education. Nevertheless, we have made it one of our key priorities to do even more to ensure fair access and we are currently developing our outreach activities accordingly.”

The 60-page HEPI research paper, entitled The Impact of Selective Secondary Education on Progression to Higher Education, was written by Iain Mansfield, a former senior civil servant at departments including the Department for Education. Its findings suggest that grammar schools can increase the likelihood of progression to the top third of higher education institutions (as defined by the Department for Education) for pupils from some traditionally disadvantaged groups, including pupils in the most disadvantaged two quintiles, namely social disadvantage and BME. In fact, it showed that the latter are more than five times as likely to progress to Oxbridge if they live in an area with selective schools than in a non-selective area, with England’s 163 grammar schools sending more BME students to Cambridge than all 1,849 non-selective state schools combined.

Commenting on the findings in the Times Educational Supplement, Mr Mansfield makes a plea for expanding grammar schools: “…for many disadvantaged students, grammar schools provide an unrivalled ladder of opportunity, offering them a route to elite higher education that is simply not systematically available to them elsewhere.”

He also tackles one frequent criticism of selective education head-on: “Did you know that that 45 per cent of pupils at grammar schools come from households with below-median incomes? Opponents of grammar schools like to portray them as only for the rich, but this statistic makes that claim demonstrably untrue. Yes, it’s true that grammar schools take a lower proportion of pupils on free school meals than one might expect – but the same is true of the most academically successful comprehensive schools, due to house-price selection.”

For his part, George Mpanga sought to inspire the visiting A-level students at King’s College, telling them: “I’m looking forward to seeing you guys in ten years and you saying to me: ‘Oh, remember that time in King’s? I was there!’ Because you will be someone, wherever you choose to go, you will be of consequence. I anticipate that; I look forward to that.”

He told them how his own time as an undergraduate had changed him: “When I went to Cambridge, I looked back at my community through binoculars and I could see it for what it is. That wouldn’t have been possible if I’d stayed in the environment. I would have become either consumed by my anger or completely disconnected with the social set-up, with the social scene.

“Being here gave me the space to look at it objectively and apply some of the disciplines of sociology, of the humanities, of the social sciences to what I saw growing up. It gave me that language. And what I found is, when I went back to that environment, everyone understood. No one looked at me funny because I’d gone to Cambridge.”

He recalled the occasion when the President of the African and Caribbean Society had persuaded him to give his first performance at Cambridge. “He was like, ‘You have to contribute. What? You’re just going to be here and you’re not going to give yourself? You’re not going to represent where you’re from in this place?’ And that pricked my conscience a little bit, so I agreed to do it.”

Three sixth-formers have qualified for the next stage of the élite British Mathematical Olympiad after strong performances in the first round.

Bashmy Basheer, Nico Puthu and Niam Vaishnav, all of Year 13, were among nine boys to reach Round 1 of the Olympiad, which is itself one of the follow-on rounds of the UK Mathematics Trust’s Senior Maths Challenge. They won a certificate of distinction and a bronze medal, with Nico scoring 40 out of 60 and both Bashmy and Niam scoring 37.

They now progress to Round 2, where success results in an invitation to participate in training to represent the country in the International Mathematical Olympiad.

Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung congratulated the three on their achievement in the first round and wished them success in Round 2.

Their fellow Year 13 pupils, Kiran Aberdeen, Kishan Patel and Robert Sarkar, also achieved a certificate of distinction. The remaining three sixth-formers all achieved a certificate of qualification in Round 1, which consisted of six long, extended questions to be completed in three-and-a-half hours.

A further 29 sixth-formers took part in the Senior Maths Challenge’s other follow-on round, the Senior Kangaroo, which represents an increase on the 2017 total of 25 and the 2016 figure of ten.

Thirteen boys were each awarded a merit certificate for scores of 35 and above. Saruthan Seelan (pictured above right) in fact achieved double this total, with his score of 70 out of 100 making him the best in Year 12.

Sehj Khanna (left) was the highest scorer in Year 13 with 50/100.

The Senior Kangaroo is a one-hour paper, with all the questions requiring three-digit. Certificates of merit are awarded to the top 25%.

After qualifying as a GP, Dr Joseph Besser is now combining his practice of medicine with a passion for educating people about health – and enjoying married life in the sun in Australia.

Joe (OE 1997–2004) went on from QE to read Medicine at Nottingham. After graduating in 2009, he worked at some of the UK’s best-known hospitals, but also spent long periods in Australia, including 18 months in Melbourne as a junior doctor working in Accident & Emergency.

“Obtaining a medical degree permits you a great freedom to travel and work overseas,” he says. “I returned to London to complete GP training at St George’s in Tooting, and once completed, returned to Australia, this time to Sydney to work as a GP.

“I am now settling into life as a GP in Australia. I currently live and work in the Northern Beaches of Sydney in a beach town called Manly. I find myself on the beach almost every day. On the weekends, I spend my time playing as much beach volleyball as is humanly possible.”

His particular medical interests include psychiatry – he has worked both at The Priory and at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital – and innovations in general practice.

In 2018, he started a medical blog, Teach Me GP, and an article from it (What advice should we give to patients about their consultation?) was published in the British Journal on General Practice. “The year was full of accomplishments as I also passed my final GP exams and finished the year by getting married to my wife, Emma, who is also a doctor.”

“I hope some day to be a teacher, to emulate my favourite teachers from QE, Nottingham University and then St George’s Hospital in Tooting, those who have inspired me in the past. I am therefore undergoing training to become a GP trainer.” Joe also hopes one day “to promote better health education in primary and secondary schools. Our health is precious and yet we do not do enough to formally educate people on how to look after it.”

Those “favourite teachers” include Neil Enright, the current Headmaster, who was his Geography teacher through A-levels and who led a “memorable field trip” to Swanage.

“Although I stopped studying English after GCSE, I recall with great fondness classes with Mr [David] Ryan. I wish I had been lucky enough to live closer to the School so I could have remained in contact with more of the staff after leaving,” he adds.

Among his many other QE memories, the “lively” end-of-season rugby dinners stand out, as does the annual cross-country run, with its infamous ‘elephant dip’. “It was so wet and boggy that some unfortunate souls would lose the shoes right off their feet.”

“I made lifelong friends at QE. The best man at my wedding was a fellow lieutenant, Matt Houghton, and the old head boy [School Captain], Ashish Kalraiya, was an usher. Both were in my year.”

Scott Lesner switched careers after initially training as a lawyer – and has never looked back.

Now a recruitment specialist, Scott (OE 1987-1992) has carved out a successful career, while raising a family and maintaining his longstanding enthusiasm for football, as both player and fan.

“I didn’t love being a lawyer (and I think it’s really important to enjoy what you do at work), so I switched to legal recruitment,” he explains.

Scott joined QE in the middle of Year 8 in 1987. “I had some magnificent teachers,” he says, mentioning especially Eric Houston (who retired as Second Master in 2010 and is a Foundation Governor), History teacher Mr Oulton and Dr John Marincowitz (who went on to become Headmaster in 1999, retiring in 2011). “I didn’t just learn from them academically, but I was also moulded by them as a young man. I’m very conscious of that and grateful for it.”

Notwithstanding the School’s focus on rugby, football, including his beloved Spurs, has always been Scott’s passion: “I travelled an hour to school on the 107 bus from Kenton with a group of friends – mostly it was also a fun, social time. Once, after a particularly heated north London derby between Spurs and Arsenal, we were a bit rowdy on the bus and got in trouble for it at School.”

Such rare instances aside, he made a positive impression in both the classroom and on the sports field. “I won a number of academic prizes – if I remember rightly, for History and Latin – and I was good at sport. Cricket was my strongest and I think I played once for the First XI.”

A member of Stapylton House in an era when Stapylton was on a winning streak, he was also a prefect: “I still have my tie in a memories box.”

After A-levels in 1992, Scott progressed straight to Nottingham University to read Law and was then sponsored through Law school, training with the firm that is now CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang. “I spent a further two years there as an energy lawyer, advising clients on electricity market liberalisation and power projects.”

In 2000, he took the plunge and made his move into legal recruitment, joining Deacon Search, a firm that had been established only the year before. After a spell with another legal recruiter from 2005-2009, he returned to Deacon Search and has been there ever since.

“I’ve spent the last 18 years advising partners moving between the major UK and US law firms and conducting headhunting assignments. The highlights are always the team moves, as clients really appreciate those and, to be candid, they’re the big fees! It’s a fascinating business, as, being people-centric, no two situations are the same.”

On its website, the firm salutes him as its ‘search oracle’, highlighting his ‘photographic memory for partner moves (and for football trivia)’.

Scott adds: “Our company is doing well. We’re continuing to grow and we’re hopeful that 2019 will bring some significant international expansion.”

He is married to Katy and has three children: Jake, aged 14, Jasmine,12, and nine-year-old Max. The family live in Elstree.

A volunteer contributor at the School’s Careers Convention during the autumn, Scott remains close friends with one of his QE contemporaries – Adam Sherling (OE 1985-1992) – and is in contact occasionally with others, mostly via LinkedIn. “Recently, I exchanged messages with Khairul and Hisham Hussain for the first time in years.”

His passion for football is undimmed. “I still play five-a-side. I’m a season ticket-holder at Spurs with my dad, my sons, my cousin and some friends. I also manage my youngest boy’s Sunday league team,” he says.