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Four Year 10 boys shone in this year’s Maths Feast competition, rising to the challenge of tough questions that even included topics from the A-Level Further Mathematics syllabus.

They won two of the four rounds at the London Academy of Excellence in Tottenham, taking the maximum possible points total in the Dessert round, as well as winning the Starter round. At the end of the event, they had netted 109 points out of an overall possible total of 121, placing them first out of the 15 schools taking part, with the QE boys playing as team no. 8.

The team, who were selected by the School, comprised Andy Kwak, Alexandre Lee, Sheikh Mohiddin, and Dan Suciu.

Congratulating them, Mathematics teacher Kirtan Shah said: “This was a truly commendable achievement. All four students worked well together as a team, strategising and using each other’s strengths to their advantage.”

The competition, which is held at locations across the country, is run by the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme (AMSP) – a Government-funded initiative – and is billed as a “fun educational challenge for Year 10 students which tests problem-solving and teamwork skills”.

Each Maths Feast event is a one-off, with no further heats or finals, so participants and their accompanying teachers can take materials back with them to their schools.

This year’s challenge involved teams working on a variety of problems, ranging from a Merry Go round requiring a large amount of independent work to a relay that involved working in pairs. The A-Level Further Mathematics content came as the ‘surprise’ element of the competition; it was based around networks and algorithms.

Afterwards, team member Andy said: “I found the whole event a way for me to improve my problem-solving skills, especially in the individual round, where we had to work by ourselves and had no one else to depend on.”

Two Sixth Form pupils secured well over £11,000 when they organised their first-ever major charity event – easily beating their £5,000 target.

Year 13’s Parth Gosalia and Year 12 boy Rishi Shah put together a grand dinner, including entertainment, because both have roles as Youth Teachers at the Shri Chandana Vidyapeeth Jain School in Edgware and they were keen to demonstrate young people making a positive difference in society.

The dinner, which took place at the Shishukunj Community Centre in Edgware, was held in aid of two charities: Debra, which supports people suffering from a skin condition called Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB), and Veerayathan Nepal, which is raising money for children orphaned by the large Nepal earthquake of 2015.

Some 120 people attended the event, including committee members from the Jain School, charity representatives and local business people. Parth and Rishi worked with a third Youth Teacher, Shyam Shah, who is not a QE pupil.

The final total – not including Gift Aid – came to £11,434, which was amassed through sales, a raffle and pledges. The entertainment at the dinner included a guitarist and a magician.

Parth, who has an offer to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Christ Church, Oxford, and was a QE Vice-Captain last year, compered the event. “It was daunting at first and I was nervous to begin with, but in the end I really enjoyed the night,” he said.

“Organising the evening was a good experience for us as youth leaders: we got ‘tighter’ and learned much more about each other through the process. It was eye-opening and very rewarding.”

Rishi, who is a current Vice-Captain, delivered a 25-minute presentation on the charities’ work.

Two years ago, he visited a school run by Veerayathan, which is an Indian NGO operating internationally. The dinner was, however, raising money specifically towards its work in Nepal, where the organisation is building a centre close to Kathmandu to house and educate children orphaned in the earthquake. It will also offer adult education courses.

Jenny Jackson, Debra UK’s Business Development Manager, and Christo Kapourani, a sufferer from EB, both spoke at the dinner, and Mr Kapourani also announced the final total towards the end of the evening.

Rishi said: “I feel personally connected to these charities, therefore it was easy to present with passion. That, allied with the presentations from the Debra representatives, had a high emotional impact, which undoubtedly inspired the guests to be generous with their pledges.”

Rishi hopes to go to Nepal this summer to work as a volunteer and to present the money raised.

Another QE boy, Aaryan Sheth, of Year 11, also assisted on the day.

A Brexit specialist from UCL’s European Institute gave boys some expert insights into the current political turmoil in a lecture to Years 10 and 11.

Clément Leroy, a Research and Policy Engagement Associate at the institute, came to QE to explain the background of the recent ‘meaningful vote’ in Parliament and looked at all the major issues involved.

Although he did not, of course, know how things will play out in the coming weeks, he suggested that a ‘no deal’ outcome is quite possible – and even likely – given that this is the default position if a deal is not agreed and approved by Parliament.

Mr Leroy worked on Brexit at the French Embassy in London and on EU economic policies at the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Paris prior to his appointment to the European Institute.

Nisha Mayer, Head of Academic Enrichment, thanked Mr Leroy for his visit: “He did a good job of explaining the current situation, bringing some clarity – if not solutions!.

She added: “With wall-to-wall media coverage and lots of material on social media, it is important that we help the boys sort through the ‘noise’ to understand the key facts and issues about matters as significant as the Brexit process. We seek to develop the critical thinking and questioning skills that will equip them to formulate balanced and informed viewpoints, even if they may still respectfully disagree.”

Among the topics Mr Leroy covered during the lecture were the initial referendum, the negotiations, the Irish backstop and the potential outcomes and how we might reach them. Boys also had the opportunity to ask questions.

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.