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Broughton just pipped last year’s winner, Stapylton, to become QE’s champion House, with 1,592 points, against Stapylton’s 1,589.

Headmaster Neil Enright presented the Eric Shearly House Cup to Broughton’s leaders as the climax to the traditional end-of-year assembly.

“My congratulations go to House Captain Robin Bickers, Deputy House Captain Zeyuan Wu, and to all the members of Broughton House,” he said. “As the points totals attest, this was a closely fought contest. Points are amassed from many different areas of School life, and Broughton’s achievement thus demonstrates considerable commitment, as well as consistency across a broad range of endeavour.”

Underne came third in this year’s competition.

The cup is awarded based on points that are awarded to QE’s six Houses throughout the academic year. They include points gained through a large number of House competitions. Points are also gained according to the total number of merits and good notes earned across the year groups.

Broughton has the distinction of being the only House named after an Old Elizabethan. William Grant Broughton was educated at QE in the late 18th century and was appointed Archdeacon of New South Wales in 1828, having been noticed and assisted by the Duke of Wellington. He went on to become the first (and only) Bishop of Australia of the Church of England.

The trophy Broughton received, the Eric Shearly Cup, is named after Eric Shearly (1920–2005), who dedicated 76 years of his life to QE, where he was both a pupil and a teacher. He was an enthusiastic advocate of extra-curricular activities, having himself been a highly successful QE athletics captain in the late 1930s.

The special assembly was introduced by Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter, who leads the QE Flourish extra-curricular programme.

He told the boys that QE Flourish this year included no fewer than 200 trips, 33 of them residential. Every single member of QE’s teaching staff took part in at least one School trip. Six hundred and fifty boys had seen a live show. In total, the programme had delivered 13,508 experiences to individual pupils, Mr Bonham-Carter said.

The assembly celebrated many of the year’s achievements and House competitions. Areas covered included charity work; the environment (including autumn tree-planting and bulb-planting as part of the 2023 450th anniversary celebrations); EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion); QE Together (the pupil-led community partnership with Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School); debating; Music; chess; drama; and sport.

The boys were told that £500 was raised for the Noah’s Ark Hospice and another £500 for overseas charitable work, split between the School’s long-running Sai School Appeal supporting a rural school in Kerala, India, and Teach Sri Lanka, which supports the education of children from all communities and all backgrounds in that nation.

The assembly also celebrated a busy year for the School’s musicians, who have been involved in eight concerts, QE’s May the fourth be almost with you Music festival, trips, charity performances, and this month’s tour to Vienna, as well as providing musical support for several formal School occasions.

With chess thriving at QE, especially in the lower years, there was the announcement of 20 boys winning junior colours, seven winning intermediate and seven winning senior, as well as a large number of commendations.

In sport, 23 teams represented the School this year. There were more than 119 fixtures, with a total of 407 different boys playing for QE.

 

Stapylton House beat rivals Broughton at Sports Day 2024 in the closest contest for years.

The blues of Stapylton emerged victorious by the narrowest of margins – a single point – thus bringing to an end the multi-year Sports Day dominance of red rivals Broughton.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “With Stapylton winning by 587 points to Broughton’s 586, the competition could hardly have been any more exciting! Well done to all the hundreds of boys who competed and to our winners.

“My thanks go to the PE & Games department for successfully putting on a one-day festival of physical activity that was a great deal of fun.”

Sports Day covered a wide range of disciplines, including individual track and field athletics events, rowing, triathlon, badminton, table-tennis, Eton Fives, tug-of-war and volleyball.

It involved every pupil from Year 7 through to Year 10. Large numbers of staff were on hand to make sure everything ran smoothly, with the Year 12 Sports Leaders also playing an important role in the administration.

The event was the swansong of Head of Rugby James Clarke, who leaves the School this summer after working in the department for a dozen years. As an Old Elizabethan (1999-2004), if he felt some disappointment that his own House, Broughton, missed out, there was at least consolation in the fact that he anchored the staff team to victory in the traditional finale to Sports Day – the QE Mile, a 16 x 100m relay.

Pictured, top, is Year 10’s Faaiz Adil, one of the School’s leading young sportsmen, quite literally throwing himself into his race.

• Click on the thumbnails to view the images.

 

QE’s PE & Games department hosted a new OE vs OE cricket match for alumni who have left over the past two decades, with the teams split by age.

And, says Director of Sport Jonathan Hart, what a game it was, ending with a “thrilling victory” for the ‘oldies’! “It’s intended as a celebration of past cricket talent aimed also at strengthening ties among alumni – we’re hoping to make it an annual fixture.”

With no alumni vs the School game on Founder’s Day this year, this match represented a unique opportunity for OEs who enjoy cricket to get together at QE this term.

“Despite recent heavy rain making the wicket challenging for batting, the older OE team managed to post a respectable 109 in their allotted 20 overs,” said Mr Hart.

“In response, the younger OE side started strongly and were cruising at the halfway mark, needing just 5 runs per over. However, the game took a dramatic turn with two key retirements and an unexpected injury, leading to a classic batting collapse. Needing 15 runs from the final over, the younger team fell short by 9 runs, handing the ‘oldies’ a thrilling victory.

“This exciting and memorable match on Stapylton Field left attendees keen to establish a tradition. It was great to see former staff members Tim Bennett and Mark Peplow there, too.”

The line-ups

‘Oldies’
Rohan Radia
Omar Mohamed
Nir Shah
Drew Williams
Nik Patel
Kunal Shah
Kushal Patel
Chris Deane
Shahil Sheth
Seb Feszczur-Hatchett
Niam Radia
Haider Jabir
Mehul Thanki
Jaimin Patel

 

‘Youngers’
Vivek Nair
Bhav Rambhiya
Kevin Van der Geest
Jish Mathan
Rahul Patel
Rishaanth Ananthajeyasri
Yaamir Khurana
Dilan Sheth
Vigneswaran Thelaxshan
Bavan Gunaseelan
Mukilan Bakeerathan
Niraj Shah

• Click on the thumbnails to view the photos.

 

 

Pavir Patel sent the Headmaster this photo of himself, Akshat Sharma and Richard Ou connecting in San Francisco.

Richard (OE 2010-2015) brought us the story behind the image: “All three of us are founders looking to build billion-dollar companies in Silicon Valley. Quite a few QE boys that I’ve met in the US have been entrepreneurs, too, all having raised not so insignificant amounts of capital. It feels like we’re following in the footsteps of Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman maybe a few years or a decade behind.

“What I am really excited about is more people from QE coming to the US. I think this is the place to be.”

Pavir (OE 2003–2010) and Akshat (OE 2012–2019) are part of the long-established international Entrepreneur First accelerator, which runs one of its four programmes in San Francisco. “However, they’d not met until after Pavir’s encounter with me,” says Richard. “I met Pavir at a FinTech AI hackathon hosted at the Digital Garage office in San Francisco. The conversation went something like this:”

Richard: “Where in the UK are you from?”

Pavir: “London, what about you?”

Richard: “I’m from London as well. Whereabouts?”

Pavir: “Stratford, and you?”

Richard: “Highgate”

Pavir: “I used to go to school up north of Highgate!”

Richard: “Really, where?”

Pavir: “QE Boys”

Richard: “Holy sh*t, I went to QE as well!”

Richard later met Akshat at the Entrepreneur First office.

As for Pavir and Akshat, they knew each other through being in the same accelerator, but did not realise the full extent of their connection until a conversation in a Waymo (self-driving car) turned to their backgrounds. “It was surreal,” says Akshat. “We were mates already and were speaking about our homes in the UK and school experiences…and there was a moment of realisation of ‘Wait a second – that sounds very familiar’ when we realised we both went to QE!”

Since then, the three have created a group chat and have been expanding it to include more OEs in San Francisco.

Richard said he realised even before going to university where he needed to be to pursue his goal of founding and growing a startup. “I knew that if I wanted to do it, the only place I could was the US. The problem was that education in the US was so expensive – four years of a degree course can easily be $250,000.”

The solution he arrived at was to go to King’s College London, majoring in Physics (“my passion”) for his first degree and then come to the US for a Master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania – “only two years!” He worked out some further ways to reduce the financial burden, including becoming a Resident Advisor (RA) – a peer mentor for other students – which comes with the major plus that free housing and food are provided.

The idea for his business came about when he graduated from Penn. last year and was looking for a graduation photographer. “I realised it was really hard – there is not really any infrastructure for freelancing.”

With time on his hands, he worked out a plan for a business to put that right, checking that he had a Minimum Viable Business (MVB). He shared the plan with the photographer he had eventually found, Jerry Cai. “As soon as I pitched it to him, he said: ‘I want in.’”

The two became co-founders of Agorum, described on its website as “a freelancer marketplace connecting clients with skilled creatives”. They have started initially by focusing on freelancers who require a physical presence for their work – photographers, DJs and private chefs.

The process has not always been easy. “Funding was difficult at first. We tried raising funds last year when the economy was not doing very well.”

Since then, however, they have been scaling rapidly, and Richard is focused on taking the business global. Agorum was recently valued at $10m.

“I think what changed things was moving to the Bay area: I don’t think there is an eco-system like the Bay’s that exists anywhere else in the world.

He acknowledges the help provided by his accelerator – VIP-X (different from Pavir’s and Akshat’s). VIP-X is run by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school and caters primarily for people associated with Penn. and Wharton. It takes no equity and offers what are essentially grants, not loans.

“I think one of the hardest parts of doing a startup is the loneliness and distance that comes with it,” says Richard. “Few people can relate.” In particular, he has found the constant need for absolute discretion about his plans for the business hard.  “As the CEO, there is only so much you can ever say.”

“As my role has changed from managing a team of 1.5 people to now a team of ten, the problems are constantly evolving.”

“The thing is persistence,” Richard says, stressing the importance of listening to clients, who sometimes provide the only clue as to a way forward.  “There is something about this gut instinct – and it usually comes from your customer. It becomes your driving force.”

Richard has no doubt as to the source of his strength. “When I look back at my time at QE, it was hard. A lot of homework and pressure. Retrospectively, that is what helped, giving me the resilience I am drawing on now. A lot of people have shared that with me, too. Things were always hard, but that raised your tolerance for a lot of things.”

For his part, Akshat is currently building a company called Orbit. The sad truth about the current digital age is that “we have never been historically unhappier,” he says. “Orbit will empower people by making mental health as transparent and actionable as physical health through a non-invasive brain wearable. Orbit is unlocking cognition by building the first foundation model of the brain!”

In addition to his work with Entrepreneur First, Akshat is part of the first cohort of Founders – the University of Cambridge’s own accelerator programme. He graduated from Cambridge in Biomedical Engineering last year, launching Orbit at the start of 2024.

“At the Neuro Optics Lab [in Cambridge], I developed the first, and only, brain computer interface using HD DOT, a novel imaging approach to track human brain function at comparable resolutions to an fMRI. This modality, being cheap, portable and high resolution, is uniquely positioned to create the foundation model of our brains!”

Akshat has won multiple awards at international conferences and is writing a first-author paper on the subject.

By leveraging the novel wearable technology, Orbit is focussing on making brain-tracking as simple and accessible as Fitbit made fitness-tracking – “all in the comfort of your favourite baseball cap or beanie!” as he puts it.

“With each version, Orbit builds the largest, real-world brain data-sets to unlock new secrets about the way we perceive the world around us – our cognition. It starts by understanding mental workload and aims to progress to complex mental states, including anxiety, stress and depression. Each version helps us regain control of a new emotion, at each step regaining happiness through giving us a deeper understanding and control of our brain.”

Finally, Pavir Patel’s business is Outerop. Like Akshat’s business, it launched at the beginning of this year. Outerop helps grow businesses online using AI, making it easier for them to build high-quality, reliable Large Language Model (LLM) products and to start creating self-optimising LLM pipelines (a series of steps where the output of one is the input of the other). Its slogan is: “Build GenAI products your customers love.”

Since reading Economics at Nottingham, Pavir has, he says, “done all sorts – from incubating J P Morgan’s first AI startup doing NLP; setting up their FinTech team in Asia (Hong Kong was awesome!) and scaling Europe’s leading broker/crypto exchange, Bitpanda Pro, to spinning off a company with a Series A raise [a company’s first significant round of venture-capital financing] to launching an e-commerce business with my wife”.

 

 

Shaun McSweeney (OE 1970–1977) is now volunteering regularly to support QE Collections, working with the School’s archivist, Jenni Blackford, with his personal knowledge of his era already proving valuable in the cataloguing.

Shaun is a History graduate and qualified as a History teacher, even doing some supply teaching at QE in 1983. “Obviously I have a love of history, and I have always been grateful for my education at QE, where I had seven happy years,” he says.

The Headmaster welcomed his involvement: “It is great to have OEs as well as current students with interest in helping with the important work of archiving, and I am sure Shaun’s first-hand knowledge of some of the events he is cataloguing will be helpful in ensuring that QE Collections remains an authoritative source of information on our history.”

Notwithstanding the fact that he personally enjoyed his School years, QE itself declined while Shaun was a pupil, he says. “I entered the School in 1970, which was the last grammar-school entry before the School went comprehensive in 1971. Sad to say, I witnessed an obvious deterioration in behaviour and academic standards in the following years, such that when I was in the Lower Sixth, I was one of the sixth-formers who volunteered to help with remedial English classes for the more junior boys.” The School reverted to a fully selective admissions system under Headmaster Eamonn Harris in 1994.

“In my last year , a very young teacher took my A-level English class. His name was Eric Houston. I wonder what became of him!” Shaun took his degree at London University and initially embarked on a teaching career. “But the 1980s were a difficult time to be a History teacher and in 1988 I joined HM Customs and Excise – which eventually became HM Revenue and Customs – then Border Force, spending a total of 35 years before retiring in 2023. I had many jobs, including plain clothes work for five years. Without going into too many details, I uncovered a link between bootlegging (i.e. the smuggling of alcohol and tobacco products from Europe into the UK) and the funding of terrorism in Northern Ireland which resulted in a security alert of the highest level and I was advised to check underneath my car for bombs!

“I was stationed at Heathrow Airport from 2006 to 2023, spending most of my time dealing with cargo ‘exams’. Freight is where the majority of smuggled goods are found, not the passenger terminals. I had plenty of seizures of drugs and cigarettes, and huge amounts of counterfeit goods. Work continued through the Covid lockdown  – no working at home for us – and that resulted in vast quantities of counterfeit face masks and Covid test kits being seized.”

The archiving work does have its emotional side, he says. “Looking at old documents, I can’t help thinking that nearly everyone I knew in them is now dead. There was one teacher who tragically took his own life, and another who ended up in prison. And those two events happened while I was still a pupil. Rather depressing! But reading these documents also recalls many stories about my time at QE, some of which bring a smile to my face.”