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Two QE ensembles reached the national final of the only nationwide chamber music festival for schools.

The two groups – both in the U19 category – had been among no fewer than 12 QE ensembles to have reached the semi-finals of the 2024 Pro Corda Festival.

Director of Music Ruth Partington said: “The Pro Corda Festival is the only national festival to exclusively promote and celebrate chamber music within schools. It is a prestigious and vibrant celebration of chamber music education in the UK – and 2024’s was the biggest-ever. We were delighted to be able to host both one of the qualifying rounds and one of the semi-finals in The Friends’ Recital Hall here at QE.

“The standard was incredibly high, with students showing real musical understanding and maturity. While neither of our ensembles in the final was named among the winners, it was a great achievement to reach that stage and it was a wonderful and stretching musical experience for all involved.”

Entry in the festival is available to all instrumental ensembles of between three and nine players, who can be of any age from Year 7 to Year 13.

Seventeen ensembles from the School entered the qualifying round on 29^th January. They included ensembles exclusively for piano, violin, trumpet and classical guitar, as well as those for a mix of instruments. Several of QE’s entrants were from mixed year groups, with younger and older musicians working together.

Their repertoire was varied, featuring the work of musical giants from different eras, including Beethoven and Irving Berlin, as well as of less well-known composers, such as Moszkowski, a German-Polish composer who wrote for piano.

In both the qualifying round and semi-final, the ensembles received expert feedback and tuition from an adjudicator in a short workshop after initially performing their pieces. They were then asked to respond to that feedback live, replaying sections of their music.

The following qualified for the semi-final: U19 Trumpet Ensemble; U19 Saxophone Ensemble; U19 Piano Trio A; U19 Saxophone Quintet; U19 Senior Piano Quartet; U19 Piano Trio B; U16 Violin Piano Trio B; U16 Piano Trio A; U16 Junior String Quartet; U16 Violin Trio B; U14 Junior Brass Ensemble A; and U16 Ensemble X.

QE’s top two ensembles then headed to Central Foundation Boys’ School in Shoreditch, London, for the national final. They are pictured here during their semi-final performances. They comprise:

• U19 Violin Piano Trio A – violinists Jason Tao, of Year 12, and Ryuki Watanabe, of Year 11, with Year 10 pianist Noah Morley
• U19 Saxophone Quintet – final-year students Arjun Patel and Nathan Woodcock playing alto sax, together with Tharun Dhamodharan (baritone, Year 13), Nikhil Mark (tenor, Year 12) and Leo Sellis (soprano, Year 11).

QE and the host school were the only state schools to reach the national final. On the day, all participants had the opportunity to meet and mingle with their peers from across the country.

Afterwards, Pro Corda’s CEO, Andrew Quartermain, championed the importance of chamber music for schools. Playing in chamber music ensembles provides “a pivotal and life-long musical and artistic training”, he said, praising the “sparky unique characters, the warm collaboration [and] the individuality in equal measure to the togetherness” seen during the festival.

The five Chamber Champion Ensembles named as winners at the national final were from: King’s High School, Warwick; Ipswich School; Eltham College, south London; Woldingham School, Surrey; and Portsmouth Grammar School.

Hundreds of sixth-formers were involved in a two-day entrepreneurship festival hosted by QE that featured a pitching competition where real money was offered to real entrepreneurs.

As well as a workshop and presentations, the festival incorporated the final of the quarterly Startup Competition run by LSE Generate – the London School of Economics and Political Science’s entrepreneurial hub. This included a Dragon’s Den-style pitching competition.

Year 12 pupils from QE were joined by counterparts visiting from North London Collegiate School. QE frequently collaborates with NLCS as part of an academic partnership between the two schools.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It was an inspiring couple of days! Hosting the event provided a brilliant way of celebrating innovation and leadership among entrepreneurs of all backgrounds, giving our boys an insight into the worlds of business and seed-funding.

“The workshop got the students working together to think about how they can empower themselves and others to solve the problems they see in society.”

The workshop was run by entrepreneur Nikita Khandwala and the LSE Generate team. Nikita, who read Spanish and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, is a freelance writer and consultant, who is also Head of Partnerships for the London Interdisciplinary School.

Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter outlined some of the highlights of the festival and the numbers involved.

• “Sixty Year 12 students from the two schools workshopped key entrepreneurial skills, guided by the wonderful Nikita Khandwala;
• Six real-life start-up founders gave an inspiring after-school presentation;
• Over 200 boys watched the pitching competition itself;
• Another 50 boys took part in an impromptu Q&A with the entrepreneurs during the judges’ deliberations.”

Several start-ups were allocated funding, with the top prize of £6,000 going to Haja Isatu Bah, who runs Uman4Uman, a social enterprise that focuses on the issue of period poverty in Africa, providing young girls in Sierra Leone with reusable, sustainable sanitary pads.

Haja said afterwards: “It was an honour to showcase our mission and vision alongside seven other remarkable startups, each striving to make a positive impact in their respective communities.”

The £4,000 second prize went to Prakriti Gautam, who runs agricultural business Khetipati Organics, which works with smallholders in Dhankuta, Eastern Nepal, offering them fair prices, while also providing opportunities to young people. Third and fourth prizes were £2,000 apiece, with £1,000 awarded to the four runners-up.

All the businesses had to explain how they are contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The sixth-formers even had the chance to allocate some money themselves: those observing the pitches in the competition were able to put their questions to the participants and vote – resulting in the award of a special £2,000 grant. This was added to the prize money awarded by the adult judges.

This vote for the best presentation went to one of the four runners-up, The Corporate Law Academy – described as “the largest community for those entering the legal profession, with over 20,000 members”. Its founder, Jaysen Sutton, later said he was “grateful to have won audience favourite and grant funding”. He thanked the organisers for giving him “the opportunity to talk to a very engaged group of school students”.

To view photos from festival, click on the thumbnails below.

Victory went to the School in this year’s Dinner Debate – the Elizabethan Union’s historic showpiece event.

Combining formal elements with a relaxed atmosphere and plenty of high-calibre debating, the 57th Annual Elizabethan Union Debate saw Year 13 gather in good spirits, enjoying the opportunity to socialise in a different context away from their normal day-to-day routine.

Year 13’s Anish Kumar and Shubh Rathod proposed the motion, This House believes governments are more responsible for climate change than citizens. They were opposed by Old Elizabethans Siddhant Kansal and Mark Markov (both 2015–2022).

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “The Dinner Debate is an event that intentionally bridges the gap from school to university. It blends the formality of black-tie dress, toasts and a traditional Extended Mace debating format with a relaxed atmosphere where the focus is primarily on enjoyment.”

The Elizabethan Union, QE’s debating society, is currently thriving, with debaters enjoying considerable success.

Proposing the toast to the Union, Siddhant Kansal (who was School Captain in 2021) reflected on his time at QE. Regaling his audience with a few anecdotes from his own Sixth Form experience, he also highlighted all the opportunities that were on offer within and beyond the classroom. Whilst QE can occasionally push you hard, it is all worth it and a time you will look back on fondly with great memories, he told the sixth-formers. Siddhant added that QE really does prepare you well for life at university, thanking staff for both pushing him and supporting him.

The debate itself was wide-ranging and packed with content. It was ultimately a victory for the proposition, but by a relatively narrow margin (45% to 37%, with 18% abstaining).

For the School, Anish and Shubh argued that governments have much greater ability to tackle climate change than citizens and should take responsibility for doing so. The role of governments is to protect their citizens, and they are failing in that task if they do not take more significant action. They stressed the importance of government regulation, and gave examples of how quickly action can be taken when there is determination to do so.

The opposition argued that the ability of governments is actually more limited and that big multi-national companies frequently have more influence and impact (and often more wealth). They spoke, therefore, about the power citizens have as consumers in a globalised, largely capitalist, world. Individuals can make choices about what they buy and from where. Mark stated that this power extended to what people eat: he stressed the significant impact of meat-eating on global emissions. The collective impact from these decisions could be profound. The alumni pair also highlighted the power of electorates to put into office people who care about the environment, and said that democratic participation is therefore crucial. They emphasised that, importantly, people do have agency – including everyone who had gathered in the Main School Hall for the debate.

However, the proposition pair noted that much of the world – including many of the largest polluters and contributors to climate change – is not governed democratically. People in those countries have no, or limited, choice in terms of the shape of their government. They argued that it is these governments, rather than their citizens, that have the wrong priorities and are choosing to promote projects and policies that worsen rather than lessen climate change, such as mega-building projects in the Middle East. There was discussion of the US Presidential Election and its potential consequences for climate action, and of the USA’s commitment to the Paris Climate accord.

The floor debate was finely balanced.

• Click on the thumbnails below to view the photos.

Investment sector specialist Mipham Samten (OE 2012–2019) may be among the 450 Club’s younger members, but he is clear-sighted about why he needed to buy into the club.

After taking full advantage of opportunities to get involved in debating and public-speaking while at the School, Mipham secured a place to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford.

“For me, joining the 450 Club is about supporting an institution that believes in meritocracy, as I do, recognising that without responsibility, merit is meaningless,” he says. “From those to whom much is given, much is required. In that respect, joining was an easy decision to make.”

While at university, Mipham spent a year running the Oxford Alpha Fund – a student investment society.

“The game is to find out what everyone is thinking, and identify their potential mistakes. The biggest opportunity and challenge was developing an environment where the society can stay calm when the market is panicking or exuberant. This meant choosing to work with independent thinkers, people who are comfortable being wrong publicly and who change their mind with the facts, not with the crowd. Interestingly, this is not always correlated with ‘intelligence’ per se: separating your ego from your ideas is hard, but ultimately rewarding.”

Mipham completed a summer internship with Man Group, a London Stock Exchange-listed active investment management business, in 2022, and then took up his present role with the firm in September 2023.

“I’m early in my career as an Investment Associate. Everyone wants to know, ‘What’s x fund’s ‘edge’?’ or its advantage over others. Generally, it’s pretty clear that an edge is the product of working hard now, or having worked hard before. It pays to stress assumptions others take for granted, to explore topics others ignore. Opportunities come and go, but those who are able to take advantage are those who prepared when something was unknown or unfashionable.

“I hope to continue investing professionally, learning a lot, and, hopefully, developing a little edge of my own.”

Mipham is pictured taking part in last year’s Elizabethan Union Dinner Debate alongside Saifullah Shah (OE 2013-2020).

Alan Rymer and Nicholas Warren are Old Elizabethans from different generations who worked together in the property finance industry for several years, never suspecting that they had both been to the same school.

On learning of their shared history, the pair recently paid a joint visit back to Queen’s Road, thoroughly enjoying the chance to reminisce together, while also observing how much QE has changed.

Alan said: “My background is that, having left QE in 1970, I went to work for Nat West where I studied the usual banking exams (Accounting, Economics, Law etc) to achieve my ACIB [Associateship of The Chartered Institute of Bankers], and gained promotion working at various large London branches, until I had the opportunity to specialise in real estate. I then spent much of my career working with property developers and investors to put in place their borrowing requirements – and learning a huge amount about their businesses by doing so. When I left in 2016 I set up my own business, ADR Funding Ltd, through which I focus on arranging finance specifically for the house-building sector.

“As a result, I now have contacts with a very wide range of banks and specialist funders. One of these is United Trust Bank, who I do quite a lot of work with, mainly via Nick Warren. We had already completed a number of deals when we happened to talk about where we had been brought up, and on learning that Nick lived near Queen’s Road in Barnet, I said ‘that’s where my old school is.’ The rest is history.”

For his part, Nick (OE 1991–1998), who obtained a first in Public Policy, Government & Management at the University of Birmingham, said: “Developing relationships with people is the crux of any business. Paths cross at all stages in life and it’s great to see how, like other Old Elizabethans, Alan and I have managed to connect years after leaving.”

Thanking the Headmaster, Neil Enright, and Head of External Relations, Matthew Rose, who hosted them on their visit, Nick said it had been a “fantastic few hours down memory lane”, adding: “I owe a lot to Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet, as it was a place which instilled me with discipline, resilience and a fantastic start on my educational pathway.”

Alan (OE 1963–1970) reflected on how the School had gone from “strength to strength” in the past 50 years. His memories included “cross-country runs in Galley Lane and stone-picking on the Third Field (now a well maintained rugby pitch), followed by bread-and-dripping sandwiches in the refectory – but that was in the 60s!

“QE was and remains a superb school with a great academic history, and it is good to be able to connect/reconnect with past scholars who may now share similar interests and business roles.”

Both now look forward to meeting more Old Elizabethans working in property finance.

Alan also had some career selection advice for current pupils and recent leavers: “I would say make sure you choose something that you will enjoy. I always loved working for Nat West as it gave me plenty of variety, taught me new skills, and enabled me to meet and advise hundreds of different clients over many years.”