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Pupils past, present and even future all helped make the 2018 Queen Elizabeth’s School Founder’s Day a resounding success.

The day, a great highlight of the School’s summer calendar, included a morning church service and subsequent ceremonial proceedings, before culminating in the popular afternoon fete on Stapylton Field.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This was a splendid and enjoyable day and it was a great pleasure to see everyone, from boys and their families who are set to join the School in Year 7 in September right through to the Old Elizabethans spanning several generations who came along.

“Founder’s Day really brings together the whole Elizabethan family in celebration both of the School’s history and of the strength of our present community.”

The day got off to a stirring start with the School Choir’s rendition of Handel’s coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, performed as the introit in Chipping Barnet Parish Church.

The service included hymns and Bible readings, including from the current School Captain, Aashish Khimasia, and his predecessor, Oliver Robinson, as well as the traditional Founder’s Day prayer, concluding with the petition that “our School may endure as a home of sound learning and of true godliness”.

Guest speaker for the service was Major Charles Russell (OE 1997–2004) who spoke on the theme of service, reflecting on QE’s “rich history of military service” and pointing out that 2018 marks the centenary of the end of the First World War. He went on to articulate how service to others is demonstrated throughout the Elizabethan community.

Major Russell told the congregation of boys, staff and VIPs of his experiences in 2010, when he and a fellow soldier were very seriously injured in Afghanistan, where he was serving with The Royal Gurkha Rifles. “We were on the operating table in Camp Bastion within 25 minutes of the blast, and back in Birmingham two days later.

“Although I wasn’t conscious at the time, I was visited in the intensive care unit by an Old Elizabethan – a consultant working at Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital Birmingham who had been a senior prefect when I was a brand new Year 7. The note he left me: ‘To a fellow OE in the new QE hospital; don’t worry you are in the care of the very best.’ Imagine the comfort this provided me and my family – he was absolutely right – this was the cutting edge of complex trauma medicine. No surprise to find an OE at the forefront of his profession.”

Major Russell added that he had been “touched beyond words” to receive a card from the QE staff as he lay immobilised in his hospital bed. “Not only was there a card, but a parcel was delivered containing a spanking new iPad: these had just come out in the UK and were seriously hot pieces of technology then.”

Guests at the service included Major Russell’s father, Martin Russell, who is Representative Deputy Lieutenant for the London Borough of Barnet. Also in the congregation were: the Mayor of Barnet, Cllr Reuben Thompstone; local MP Theresa Villiers and Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School Headteacher Violet Walker, as well as QE governors, former members of staff, parents and boys.

After the service, the day continued, in accordance with cherished QE tradition, with the roll call and the reading of the School Chronicle in front of the main building.

Then it was time for the fete, organised by the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s, to get into full swing, to the accompaniment of the School Concert Band. Among the many stalls, activities and attractions, the International Food Tent proved as popular as ever – takings for the Sri Lankan curry alone reportedly topped £4,000! These sales helped the FQE raise a total sum for the day provisionally put at around £21,000.

The afternoon also saw the annual Stanley Busby Memorial Cricket Match between old boys of the School and the current First XI. Played on the Third Field at the rear of the School, it was this year won by the pupils after a close encounter with a strong team of OEs.

A good many other Old Elizabethans attended the formal aspects of the day, the fete and the cricket, with some having travelled a considerable distance in order to be there.

Sixth-former Darsh Thacker’s ambitious artwork has been chosen for the Royal Academy A-level Summer Exhibition Online 2018. He beat off competition from some 2,000 entries to be included among the exhibitors.

Darsh’s project, measuring 2.56 x 2m, was displayed recently at the School along with work by his fellow QE Year 13 Fine Art A-level students. For these final pieces of work, many of the boys drew inspiration from research into their own planned career paths.

Darsh is going on to study Dentistry and his project explores the division between the personal and the clinical spheres. He employed a range of contrasting materials, including plaster of Paris casts, string, nails and even chewing gum.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “I am delighted at this very exciting news and I congratulate Darsh on his success. I found this piece of work very impressive when I visited the class recently at the end of their course.”

“In fact, I was impressed generally with what the boys had achieved: they had used the freedom they had to experiment with materials and ideas to such good effect. Clearly, they had taken the opportunity to engage in the type of detailed and meticulous research, allied to personal expression, that we seek to instil in our boys.”

Head of Art Stephen Buckeridge said: “This year’s leavers were encouraged to find a subject that was deeply personal to them and that would sustain ideas and outcomes throughout the year. As starting a project is never easy, we encouraged the boys to record and explore ideas in the broadest sense – including note-making, research, photography, drawing and making. The breadth of investigation at the beginning was important; as the projects progressed, the ideas became more refined.”

The boys were required to show evidence of deeper thinking, and “encouraged to be ambitious with their final outcomes, which are supported by a written final statement which articulates ideas and makes connections, both historically and contextually,” Mr Buckeridge added.

An expert panel of judges selected Darsh’s work as one of only 43 winning entries from more than 2,000 submissions by over 1,400 young artists.

One of the judges, Royal Academician Mali Morris, said: “Our thanks to every student who entered – all contributed to the excitement of this project. We were amazed by the strength of the shortlisted works, by their energy, inventiveness and sense of exploration. Every kind of feeling was here, from tenderness to rage, solemnity to hilarity, in a wide range of materials and processes. Congratulations to all the students and their teachers, and cheers to the schools that believe that art is still a vital subject.”

In his explanation posted as part of the online exhibition, Darsh explained the thinking behind both his artwork and its unusual title, Savium: “I became interested in examining the link between the clinical and the personal using an unconventional material. The intimacy yet inaccessibility of the word Savium also alludes to my ulterior (and superior) interest in the dichotomy between the clinical and the personal. I became intrigued in how the personal space of the body might be examined in a forensic manner. In the end this strange display successfully evoked the fundamental tension at the heart of dentistry; that of intimacy and distance, the personal and the sterile.”

Among QE’s other Year 13 Fine Art students were:

• Anand Joshi, whose artwork on the Human Condition depicted a cell. He read and researched existentialism and the writings of Michel Foucault. The French philosopher and social theorist wrote extensively on the topics of power and knowledge.
• Milan Shah, who is going on to read Politics and whose work explored ideas relating to politics and news. He used collage and mixed-media to look at how we respond to information in the modern technological world.

A chance encounter with the person who is now his wife led to a significant alteration to Adam Dossaji’s location and career trajectory.

It was soon after he had graduated from medical school that Adam (OE 2003-2010) met Saima Shikari, a doctor from New York. For a year they flew back and forth between the US and the UK before deciding to get married. During that time Adam completed all his licensing exams, allowing him to practice in the States. “I moved to the USA shortly before getting married and applied to be a resident in internal medicine,” he says.

Adam has just started his Internal Medicine Residency at Baystate Medical Centre in Central Massachusetts, where he lives in Springfield with Saima. “It’s a role that doesn’t exactly exist in the UK,” he says. “I basically cover all non-surgical medical problems in the hospital for adults. I tell my non-medical family and friends that I do what JD and Dr Cox do on Scrubs – a programme I watched at lunchtimes on a very small screen in the Sixth Form Common Room at QE!”

He remembers the School visits with particular fondness and says he now realises what a strong foundation QE laid in its boys. “It was challenging, and, at times, I complained and thought things were arcane or unnecessary. Looking back, I now see how the requirements for attention to details, for us to think for ourselves, and to take the harder road, built my resilience and gave me a belief that anything was possible.” He especially picks out the Science and Mathematics departments for their “incredible” support during his A-levels. Among the trips he enjoyed, he names the Swanage GCSE Geography trip, a visit to Mill Hill observatory and the German exchange.

After leaving QE, Adam took up a place at Kings College London School of Biomedical Sciences, graduating in Psychology with Basic Medical Sciences in 2013 and also gaining from Kings a Diploma in Theology and Philosophy. He then went on to Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’ School of Medical Education (GKT) where he was awarded his MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor of Surgery) in 2016. The previous year, as part of his training he spent four weeks at the Lady Willingdon Hospital in Manali, Himachal Pradesh in India, in general internal medicine and four weeks in Critical Care and Emergency Medicine in the Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai. He completed his Foundation Programme at the University Hospital of Wales, where he spent four months in Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary surgery, four months in A&E and a further four months in General Internal Medicine (Respiratory) in 2017.

Among the accolades he gained during his training were the National Poster Presentations prize at the Royal College of Psychiatrists International Congress in 2013 and the Royal Society of Medicine Phillip Ellman Prize in Respiratory Medicine (2014).

His current role involves working in rotation through the wards, in intensive care, in outpatients and in all the medical departments for three years. He will then move on to further training. In the future, Adam is looking forward to specialising further. “I have a keen interest in pulmonology and critical care. It involves managing some of the most acutely unwell people in the hospital, helping patients and families through some of the most difficult periods of their lives.”

His professional experience of life in the USA has been overwhelmingly positive. “America is at a very unusual point. Most people’s views of the country are based on its domestic and international politics, which at the moment is very chaotic. Personally, my experience of the USA has been very different: it is an incredibly open country, where large institutions are desperate for the best employees they can find, regardless of where you are from. They highly regard international experience and yearn to learn about different perspectives.”

“Massachusetts is an amazing place to practice and learn medicine; we are one hour from Harvard and Yale, and home to the New England Journal of Medicine. There is an argument that healthcare is more expensive in America, and the insurance system has got flaws; however, many hospitals in America are at the forefront of advances in healthcare, relentlessly expanding horizons, and at the cutting edge of treatments and cures for diseases such as cancer.”

Several of Adam’s OE friends studied Medicine, although staying in close touch can be a challenge. “It’s great having that connection, but the distance makes it harder. I am sure I will see many of their names in medical journals in coming years.”

A keen table tennis player when he was in the UK, he has pursued this even further in the US. “I’ve joined a club and now play a lot of table tennis.”

He has re-established contact with the School and hopes in the future to be able to provide information to current boys interested in studying Medicine, particularly those who wish to work abroad.

2016 leaver Sahil Handa has been reflecting on a packed first year at Harvard that has seen him embrace activities ranging from drama and dance to journalism and entrepreneurship.

The former School Vice-Captain, pictured above right with friends at the Harvard vs. Yale football match, decided to pursue a Liberal Arts degree at Harvard after being offered places at three Ivy League colleges. Sahil (OE 2009-2016) took up his place last September following a gap year.

“It has been an incredible year at Harvard and I am the happiest that I can ever remember being,” he says. “The university offered me more opportunities than I could ever have imagined; the people I met, the classes I took, and the adventures I enjoyed have made me extremely thankful for the chance to study in Boston.”

At School, Sahil was elected a drama director and also ran the QE dance club for four years. He has built significantly on this QE experience at Harvard: “I was the lead male actor in a play called JOGGING, which was performed eight times at the American Repertory Theatre and directed by professional director Melissa Nussbaum. The play is set in Beirut, deals with themes of religious violence, feminism, and motherhood, and involved me playing six different men at different stages of life. It was definitely the most intense (and rewarding) theatrical experience I’ve had so far; luckily, my mum was able to visit and watch!”

Sahil was a dancer and model for the Eleganza Fashion Show – a large charity event held in Harvard’s ice rink, which “involved lots of dancing, strutting and attitude!” – and was the Bollywood choreographer for Ghungroo, a South Asian cultural show, for which he created and taught a routine to 30 students who had never danced before.

His writing skills have rapidly attracted attention. He has won a place on the editorial board of Harvard’s renowned student newspaper, Harvard Crimson, and now writes articles for its opinion section. “I have recently been made a Harvard Writing Center Tutor,” he adds. “This is a paid part-time job reserved for undergraduates who have shown excellent writing capabilities during their time at the university, and it involves me helping undergraduate and graduate students who are struggling with an essay.” In addition, he took a workshop with Man Booker prize-shortlisted author Neel Mukherjee. “I have been writing a lot of fiction, particularly short stories,” he adds.

Sahil has also:

• Devised, co-written and directed a student play;
• Secured a position as a Freshman Arts Proctor (as the creative writing proctor) which means he will be helping those in the 2018 student intake who enrol in the week-long immersive Freshman Arts Program;
• Recently founded the Harvard Centrist Society along with a few friends; “My role will be the Director of Speakers and Networking;”
• Helped start a scheme called the Harvard Giving Pledge, which is attempting to convince all Harvard Students to commit to giving 1% of their income to charity;
• Begun working for a fellow Harvard freshman’s start-up – a productivity app aimed at high school students;
• Joined the Harvard Political Union, the main political debating organisation on campus.

Notwithstanding all these extra-curricular activities, his classes have been a highlight of the year, reports Sahil. “My favourite courses were High and Low in Post-war America – a tour of Post America’s cultural theory, art, poetry, literature, music, race relations, journalism and philosophy – and Early Modern Philosophy: Self and World –an introductory philosophy course that focused on metaphysics and epistemology. I’m looking likely to major in a combination of Philosophy, Psychology and English Literature, but I’m certainly enjoying the freedom that comes with being able to pick across all of the disciplines.”

During his first year at Harvard, he has taken a few trips with fellow students, which has served both to deepen friendships and to further his love of travel. These included a road trip & trekking expedition in Texas and a last-minute trip to Iceland a week before examinations, with Sahil and his fellow students taking advantage of $100 tickets and studying on the aeroplane to make sure their results did not suffer.

And after the final term ended last month, Sahil headed up to the famous tourist hotspot of Cape Cod to stay at the house of his best friend. “I actually met him on my gap year; we decided, along with a few other Harvard gap-year students, to backpack around Southeast Asia for two months as a group.”

QE senior roboteers achieved the best-ever result for a UK team after qualifying for the VEX EDR Robotics World Championships at their very first attempt.

The HYBRID Alpha team amassed five wins at the finals in Louisville, Kentucky, which are the culmination of a global event that has just been recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest robotics competition. And although they were unable to match the feat of QE’s junior boys in the parallel VEX IQ competition – who were crowned the UK’s first-ever world champions – they nonetheless returned from the US with a wealth of happy memories.

Year 10 pupil Deshraam Ganeshamoorthy, who was the robot driver for HYBRID Alpha, said their performance exceeded even their own expectations: “To finish with five wins and the highest rank of any UK team puts it all into perspective – the scale of the challenge when taking on the ‘super teams’ from other parts of the world. Hopefully what all the UK teams achieved here can spur on the next generation to success at the EDR championships.”

QE’s Head of Technology, Michael Noonan, who accompanied the teams together with Chemistry teacher Miss Katie Paske, added that the senior boys had “found the experience to be thoroughly enriching”.

The VEX EDR World Championships, which is open to pupils from Years 10–13 (or ‘high school’, in American parlance), bring together 600 élite teams from around the world, pitting against each other national champions from 46 different countries, as well as state champions from around the US.

Two senior QE teams took part, HYBRID Alpha and HYBRID Beta, both made up of boys from Years 10 and 12. Both teams qualified for the world championships after strong performances in regional and UK national championships, with Alpha winning the Excellence award at the regional finals at Stowe School as well as being crowned Nationals Skills Champions. Beta were a last-minute qualifier, winning the Design Award at the very end of the national championships in Telford.

Their trip to the US began with a 5.30am start and a long flight to Louisville, via Chicago. The following day was given over to rest and recuperation, with the boys taking in some of the local sights, such as the Muhammad Ali Centre and museum, and the Louisville Slugger factory, where the famous eponymous baseball bat is manufactured. The evening was spent in a flurry of preparation for the competition’s various challenges, or games.

The following day saw another early start, the boys rising at 6.30am to get the best possible chance to practise and to discuss their tactics with other teams with whom they were put in alliances. From that point on, the daily routine was a challenging one: 12 hours’ non-stop practice and competition, all of which involved communicating with other teams from around the world.

QE’s teams ended up being paired with, or competing against, teams from Bahrain, Lebanon, China, Japan, Canada and even war-torn Syria, as well as various state champions from around the US.

“Amid very strong competition the boys thrived, recording some of their highest scores of the season,” said Mr Noonan. “However, given the highly dedicated and highly funded approach of some of the US and China teams, even their best was at times not enough to turn the fixture.”

Nevertheless, Alpha distinguished themselves with their strong performance in a divisional match, becoming the first UK team ever to reach the final 16 at the world championship – beating another London team, from Fortismere School in Muswell Hill, to this honour by a matter of a few moments.

Alpha were paired for this match with a team from Rolling Hills, California. “Hybrid’s efforts were valiant, but excellent defence from the Chinese and Canadian combination saw their opponents win by a narrow margin of 115-92.”

Alpha’s disappointment at the loss was later rendered bittersweet when one of these two opposing teams went on to remain undefeated in all their remaining games and eventually be crowned World Teamwork Champions.

There were two more treats in store for the boys: they were able to see the unveiling of the newest robotics game, Turning Point, and they had just enough time to enjoy the thrilling rides and attractions of the Kentucky Kingdom theme park before heading for home.

• The Alpha team comprised: Year 12 pupil Aadi Desai, with Deshraam Ganeshamoorthy, Bhargab Ghoshal, James Tan and Ukendar Vadivel, all from Year 10. Beta were: Dilan Sheth, of Year 12, together with Year 10 boys Sunay Challa, Devin Karia, Daniel Radzik-Rahman and Yai Sagolsem.