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Broughton successfully took on last year’s champions, Stapylton, in the grand final of QIQE to claim the crown in this year’s inter-House quiz.

The fiercely fought battle in front of the whole of Years 7–10 saw Broughton win with a total of 180 points, ahead of Stapylton’s 100, notwithstanding the presence in the Stapylton team of Year 9 boy Rahul Doshi, who was Channel 4’s Child Genius in 2017.

Both Houses had secured their places in the final after topping their respective group rounds in the earlier stages of the competition, which is modelled on the BBC’s University Challenge.

Organiser James Clarke (OE), who is an Extra-curricular Enrichment Tutor, said: “In recent years, QIQE has established itself as a key fixture within our eclectic programme of events that make up the overall House Competition.

“The final was an exciting and enjoyable event which showcased the boys’ impressive general knowledge and involved their competing under considerable time pressure and in front of a very large and enthusiastic audience of their peers. Credit must go to all the participants, and my congratulations to Broughton.”

Biology teacher Hinesh Shah (OE) acted as quiz master for the final in the Shearly Hall, which followed the familiar format of a starter-for-ten, followed by three bonus questions worth 5 points each, with 5 points lost for those who ‘buzzed’ (or, in fact, raised their paddle) before the question was finished and then got the answer wrong. The final lasted 20 minutes.

Each team comprised one boy from each of years 7, 8, 9 and 10. Boys are restricted to only competing in the quiz once, so, for example, last year’s competitors were ineligible.

While Stapylton were strong on buildings & architecture, car manufacturers, food and capital cities, the Broughton boys’ impressive knowledge of astronomy & astrophysics, television characters, authors, football grounds and film scores helped see them to victory.

The Broughton finalists were: Sultan Khokhar (Year 10); Ishaan Mehta (Year 9), Aradhya Singh (Year 8) and Kaushik Reddy Nakki Reddy (Year 7). Stapylton’s team were: Aarav Shah (Year 10); Rahul Doshi (Year 9); Madhav Menon (Year 8) and Koustuv Bhowmick (Year 7).

The full placings of QE’s six Houses were as follows:
1st – Broughton (180 points in the final; topped their group with 115 points)
2nd – Stapylton (100 points in the final; topped their group with 160 points)
3rd – Underne (115 points in group)
4th – Pearce (110 points in group)
5th – Leicester (95 points in group)
6th – Harrisons’ (50 points)

• How would you have fared? Here are six sample questions. Answers at the bottom.
  1. Puck, Bottom and Titania are all characters in which Shakespeare play?
  2. For this airport code, name the European city that you would be flying to:
  OPO
  3. How many colours are there in the spectrum when white light is separated?
  4. Which recently deceased comic book writer has had a cameo in the majority of Marvel films?
  5. The Allianz Arena football ground is home to which European club?
  6. What is the jellylike material that makes up much of a cell inside the cell membrane?

• Answers:
  1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  2. Porto
  3. Seven
  4. Stan Lee
  5. Bayern Munich
  6. Cytoplasm

Queen Elizabeth’s School has been named the country’s top state school in the influential Sunday Times Parent Power survey.

QE overtook the 2017 winners, The Henrietta Barnett School, to head the list of the 150 leading state schools.

The rankings are determined by the percentage of examination entries gaining A* to B grades at A-level this summer (which is given double weighting) and the percentage of entries awarded A* and A grades at GCSE.

At QE, 97.3% of A-levels were awarded A* and B in August – the 13th consecutive year in which this key statistic has topped 95%. For GCSEs, 92.2% of examinations received A* or A grades (or their numerical equivalents), while at the very highest level, the proportion of A* grades reached 76.5%, which was a new School record.

QE’s Parent Power success follows the recent publication of Government league tables revealing that its boys make more progress in their first five years than pupils at any other grammar school in the country, according to the Government’s own Progress 8 ‘value-added’ measure.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to both my colleagues and the boys on this very welcome news: I am tremendously proud to lead such an outstanding school. Our position at the head of this survey reflects a sustained and meticulous focus on excellence in all areas of School life.

“We offer a broad and balanced curriculum and seek to foster in our pupils habits of free-thinking scholarship: these combine thorough mastery of their subjects with a desire to pursue their own academic interests beyond the confines of the classroom syllabus.

“Moreover, there is much more to QE than examination success, important as that is in securing places at the world’s best universities. We strongly encourage all boys to take full advantage of the very wide range of extra-curricular activities.

“The fruit of this may be seen in the high standards achieved, for example, on the sports field, in the performing arts and in areas such as robotics, in which QE won a world title this year.

“Through an emphasis on service – such as in our Sixth Form volunteering programme – we aim to ensure that our boys will go on to make a valuable contribution to society.

“In short, QE aims to help our pupils become happy, well-rounded individuals, or, as our School mission has it, to ‘produce young men who are confident, able and responsible’.”

The upper reaches of the Parent Power state school survey are dominated by selective schools. This year’s Parent Power reveals that, in national terms, state schools are closing the gap on the independent sector: the 128 schools in which at least half the GCSEs taken were graded A*, or 9/8, this year include 38 state schools (including QE), or nearly a third. In 2016, the proportion was only 20%.

The Parent Power guide is available online here.

Phil Peters is Managing Director of a fast-growing e-commerce business aiming to revolutionise the Chinese food delivery market.

Phil (OE 1997–2004) leads a team working to ensure London-based Zing Zing the “best Chinese takeout in the world”. Zing Zing, which was launched in 2013, sets itself apart by using only the freshest ingredients – and no monosodium glutamate!

He read Political Science and Philosophy at Birmingham and then worked for BBYO – the world’s largest Jewish youth organisation – before going into management consultancy, training first at PricewaterhouseCoopers and then working at i2a Consulting.

In 2014, he joined Tesco.com’s Customer Fulfilment Team in 2014 to look after various aspects of UK, and then, international online delivery.

Two years later, Phil was appointed as Zing Zing’s Operations Director, becoming MD a year after that. He worked on delivering an ambitious roll-out plan that has already seen the business grow from two sites to six since his arrival, which followed shortly after record-breaking Crowdcube fundraising.

He is pictured above with his colleague, joint Zing Zing founder Mark Schlagman, at the British Chinese Food Awards last year, where the company won the title of Best UK Chinese Takeaway.

With his breadth of experience in the professional services and start-up world, Phil was among the many Old Elizabethan volunteers contributing to QE’s recent Careers Convention for Year 11 boys and their parents, where he enjoyed talking to pupils interested in careers beyond the ‘traditional’ options available to them.

The 123rd Old Elizabethans Association Annual Dinner brought together old boys of all eras for an evening offering both formality and fun.

The evening featured the customary speeches and time-honoured toasts, but there was also opportunity aplenty for alumni to chat with old classmates and strike up new friendships in a relaxed and convivial environment.

As is usual at the dinner, there was a particularly strong turnout from the ‘ten-year leavers’ – those who started in Year 7 in 2002 and will therefore mark ten years since they left the School in summer 2009 at the end of this academic year.

Guest speaker Alan Ingham (OE 1987–1994) entertained his fellow alumni with his recollections of School life during an era of great international uncertainty, recounting the confident prediction of one teacher that the Berlin Wall would not fall in his lifetime – just months before it did.

Alan, a senior software developer with electronic trading company Nex Group, attended with his fiancée, Ana Maria Soler Castells, whom he was marrying on the following day. He had, therefore, been very busy in the run-up to the dinner, he said, but added that the resilience one learns as a QE boy had stood him in good stead as he strove to cope with these competing demands!

Reflecting on the evening afterwards, Headmaster Neil Enright said: “There was a lovely atmosphere at this dinner – a reflection, I am sure, of the increasing connections being made by our alumni both with each other and with the School.

“We are always keen to welcome alumni here and I know many OEs value the opportunity to visit, to see what has changed and often to check out who among their old teachers are still here. Many also take time during such visits to reflect on what they have gained in life by being a pupil at QE, and it is this appreciation which is driving so many to volunteer to help current boys and give something back.”

In his speech on the evening itself, the Headmaster began by welcoming all the guests: “Tonight is an opportunity for reflection, reconnection and celebration.”

Mr Enright reserved a special welcome the ten-year leavers, the class of 2002-2009 (or 2002-2007 for those who did A-levels elsewhere). They were, he said, a “fun, friendly and very successful cohort”, noting that they had started at QE on Monday 2nd September 2002, thus coinciding with his own arrival as a young teacher.

Those from this group who attended the dinner included Commonwealth Games triple-jump finalist Nathan Fox and George ‘the Poet’ Mpanga, the high-profile spoken-word artist who spoke in front of the Queen on Commonwealth Day and who performed a specially commissioned poem as part of the international TV coverage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding.

The Headmaster outlined a number of “big themes” which are currently being considered as part of the School’s long-term development. One of them is “keeping in touch” – which includes drawing on the experience and insight of OEs to assist current boys, many of whom are the first in their families to apply to top universities or to try to enter the most competitive professions.

The formal proceedings included toasts to Queen Elizabeth II and to “the pious memory of Queen Elizabeth I” (by tradition, honoured in silence). School Captain Aashish proposed the toast to the association, with the response given by the association’s Chairman, Martyn Bradish (OE 1962–1969). This was followed by the toast to the School proposed by guest speaker Alan Ingham, with the Headmaster giving the response.

Association President Ken Cooper (OE 1942–1950) presented the School Captain with the Eric Shearly Memorial Prize for Outstanding Commitment. The citation noted Aashish’s “modest and quiet commitment to the life of the School.” It continued: “His talents and involvements are many and diverse; he has been a success at each stage of his academic career, attaining the top grade in every subject that he studied at GCSE and A-level, whilst also acting as form captain, colt prefect, and participating in rugby in each year group on his journey through the School. And he is an exceptional musician too!”

Aashish hopes to study Neuroscience at university and has already prepared for this by undertaking work experience in local hospitals and by examining neurological ways of treating depression in his Extended Project Qualification dissertation.

The guests enjoyed a smoked salmon rillette with pickled beetroot and pea shoots and a main course of roast belly of pork with roasted new potatoes, followed by Eton Mess for dessert, topped off with coffee and mints.

Many of QE’s younger musicians performed in a concert entitled The Show Must Go On – the first of the academic year.

The Music Department event in the Shearly Hall featured around a dozen ensembles drawn heavily from the Lower School.

And even though one – the Guitar Ensemble – was unable to perform because of a technical problem, true to the theme of the evening the other performers valiantly played on to deliver the rest of the programme.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This was a very good concert, amply demonstrating the strength of Music at the School in both breadth and depth, as shown on the one hand by the high levels of musical participation – around 100 boys performed in the School Choir alone – and on the other by the talent that was so evident on the night.

“Music is a key part in the wider life of the School, and I congratulate the boys on their preparation and performances.”

Music teacher Jennifer Brown paid tribute to the boys playing publicly for the first time. She pointed out that many members of the Concert Band in particular had not yet progressed beyond grade 2, yet had performed well, the concert providing them with valuable opportunities to improve skills such as sight-reading.

The concert featured diverse music from the world of show business, including hits from The Greatest Showman (the 2017 musical film about American showman and circus impresario P T Barnum), the jazz classic, In The Mood, and, of course, the iconic Queen song borrowed for the concert’s title.

Other well-known pieces of music in the programme ranged from the Allegro in Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, performed by the Flute Ensemble, to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme tune, played by the Celli. The Junior Indian Ensemble performed Paapanaasam Shivan’s Singara Velavan.