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Pupils at Queen Elizabeth’s School enjoyed themselves at the end of term with all the festivities, but also made time to remember those less fortunate than themselves during the season of goodwill.

The last few days of term featured the traditional Service of Nine Lessons and Carols in Chipping Barnet Parish Church; Christmas dinner at the School with all the trappings; and a trio of charity activities in the borough.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Our carol service was magnificent – a spectacularly rousing evening. The music really was excellent, with a variety of arrangements used to make traditional tunes and texts feel fresh and resonate.

“The readers did well, too – and with the internal scaffolding above the chancel steps removed, following the completion of repair works following recent storm damage – the packed church was looking splendid.

“The carol service, combined with the charity work, made a fitting footnote to a year that has seen high success for the School. I wish all current QE families, staff, alumni and other friends of the School an enjoyable holiday and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.”

The service at St John the Baptist Church featured congregational singing of some seasonal favourites, starting with Once in Royal David’s City.  The School’s musicians played a full part, with the Barbershop and Chamber Choir performing some less well-known pieces, including carols from France and Austria. Members of QE’s growing cohort of organists took part, too, with Year 8’s Gabriel Ward, Zach Fernandez, of Year 9, and final-year student Joel Swedensky all playing before the start of the service.

The Barbershop were also in action at Barnet Grange care home, where they sang carols for the residents and then spent time chatting with them.

There were School-wide charity collections for Chipping Barnet Foodbank and Homeless Action in Barnet, and for Sebby’s Corner, a charity based just around the corner from the School on the Queen’s Road industrial estate, with which QE has formed a new partnership this year.

Pupils and staff donated non-perishable food, clothing and toiletries, as well as new toys for children who might otherwise go without this year.

Christmas dinner at the School proved as popular as ever, with Year 7 in particular eager to don their paper hats from their crackers!

Click the thumbnails below to view the images.

From OEs Andrei Sandu and Darshan Patel comes an inspiring account showing the power of the guidance that our alumni community can give current pupils who are thinking about their futures.

Their joint story starts at the 2018 Careers Convention, where Andrei (OE 2007–2014) was representing the Civil Service and Darshan was a Year 12 student uncertain about his future. It ends with Andrei and Darshan (OE 2012–2019) unexpectedly working together at the Cabinet Office!

Andrei left QE in 2014 to study Economics at Durham, joining the Civil Service as an economist after graduating. “Only a handful of others on my course considered it as a career option – indeed I found out about the Civil Service ‘by accident’ through a friend.”

After very positive experiences in his first year, including being entrusted to advise a Minister at a meeting of the Council of the EU in Brussels, he has been doing what he can to raise awareness of jobs in the Civil Service.

“Through my career, I’ve enjoyed working in roles where I can use insights from economics and data to influence policy development on a range of interesting issues, including trade negotiations and international industrial policy. I now head up a team of economists in the Cabinet Office.

“I’ve taken part in QE’s Careers Convention each year because I think it benefits the students and the Civil Service in general – I never expected it to benefit me personally!”

Darshan takes up the story. “I was in the first year of Sixth Form, not really thinking about my career and what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I enjoyed Economics and its real-world applications.

“When I met Andrei at his stall, he told me that he was an economist at the Civil Service. I had no idea what either of those terms meant, but I quickly realised that this was exactly what I was looking for; a way to use what I was learning in the classroom to have a genuine positive impact on people and the economy. Following that conversation, I was sure that I would study Economics at university and apply to the Civil Service upon graduation.”

A first degree followed – also at Durham – and then a Master’s in Economics at Queen Mary University of London.

“Fast forward to 2024, I successfully applied for a job at the Cabinet Office, and I was amazed to find out that Andrei was the head of the team I was joining. I am really enjoying my work, and I feel like I am having an impact every single day. I would highly recommend a career in the Civil Service to any Economics student that wants the same – but whatever career path you’re thinking about, follow your passions, reach out to people and learn about all that’s available to you!”

For his part, Andrei concludes: “I wasn’t involved in the recruitment process for Darshan, so was amazed to find out we’d reconnected in this way, and he’s been an asset to the team ever since.”

Year 7 pupil Aarav Kumar has been chosen as Young Geographer of the Year in his age category in the Royal Society of Geography’s prestigious international annual competition.

Having first won the initial QE round, Aarav went on to impress the judges with his colourful, information-packed poster on the theme of Choose Geography.

Geography teacher and Enrichment tutor Eleanor Barrett said: “Aarav’s well-researched work perfectly captured the essence of Choose Geography, highlighting how the subject empowers us to understand the world and address its challenges. His win is a fantastic achievement, and we are thrilled to see his talent and hard work recognised at such a prestigious level.”

Pupils aged from seven to 18 were invited to create posters that demonstrated the relevance of Geography and how studying it can help those studying understand the world we live in and the global challenges we face as a society.

The competition aims to inspire young people to engage with Geography and show its importance in addressing issues such as climate change, sustainability, and biodiversity loss.

With schools hosting their own heats and submitting only their winners, the 1,000 entries received by the society represented just a fraction of the overall number of participating pupils.

In a ceremony hosted at the Royal Society of Geography in central London, two winners and two runners-up were announced for each age group – and Aarav was announced as one of the winners in the Key Stage 2 (7-11) category. He is pictured here with other winners in the various age groups.

His poster, which centred around his drawing of the earth, included several features:

• Brief profiles of several Geography-related jobs, including cartographer and climatologist, under the heading ‘Want fun, good-paying, creative jobs related to the world: look here!’
• A summary of ‘the geographer’s mindsets’ , divided into the following categories: ‘create’, ‘evaluate’, ‘apply’, ‘discover’ and ‘understand’
• Descriptions of the educational benefits of taking the subject, including a look at Geography GCSE and A-level.

The society’s director, Professor Joe Smith, praised the quality of the entries: “The students have clearly demonstrated how geographical skills and thinking are vital for addressing global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss.”

“Not many readers of QE Connect will remember me, I presume, but I have still been asked to reminisce about my time at the School. My name is Dieter Pinkowski and I was the German assistant at Queen Elizabeth’s Boys’ School in Barnet from September 1974 to June 1975.

Almost half a century later, I decided to contact the School and ask whether I would be welcome to walk down memory lane one day in September 2024 – 50 years after I had first set foot there. I received a positive answer from Matthew Rose [Head of External Relations]. Both Matthew and the Headmaster made me feel very welcome on the day. I was shown around the buildings, I talked to a class of A-level students of German and I was invited to have a cup of coffee in the Headmaster’s study, where we had a lengthy conversation.

In 1974, as a 21-year-old university student of English and History (at TU Braunschweig) who wanted to spend at least a year in England before graduating, I was happy to be offered employment by the London Borough of Barnet as a foreign language assistant at QE (and Edgware Comprehensive) for ten months at a monthly salary of £66. I lived on Byng Road at first and moved to Normandy Avenue early in 1975.

At QE, my mentor was Kenneth W Carter, Head of Modern Languages. The colleagues teaching German that I remember best were Knuth Saam and John Osborne, who both helped me to settle down in my new environment and occasionally asked me to accompany them to their German classes.

My main job, however, was to do German conversation lessons, grammar and vocabulary with the A-level students. Being 21, the age gap between the sixth-formers and me was not that large, and I spent as much time in the Sixth Form common room as in the teachers’ staff room. Even today I remember all my A-level students (Upper Sixth: Andrew Norris, Keith Newton [pictured here], John Dixon, Adrian (Sid) Sinclair, Alistair Johnstone, Lower Sixth: David Peacock and Steven Cohen) and also a number of other sixth-formers (David Hulford, Peter Ward and Ben Glatt, Mark Gardener). I still exchange Christmas cards with John, who went up to Oxford to read German, and I helped first Andy and, years later, Pete to find employment and settle down in Germany. Being busy with my own career and family I lost contact with them when they moved to other parts of Germany and started their families. With Steven I sometimes went to watch his favourite club, Spurs, (even though I was, and still am, an Arsenal fan) and I enjoyed the friendly banter there. With Ben G. and a few others I went to Knebworth Park to see Pink Floyd perform Wish You Were Here for the very first time in public, and with Andy and Dave I attended a number of Cambridge Folk Festivals in the following years.

What did I do after my year at QE? Well, after finishing university, I trained to become a teacher of English and History, and eventually taught my subjects at a German grammar school. When I retired in 2019, I could proudly look back on 40 years of teaching.

Today I still try to visit Britain at least once a year. Having discovered long-distance walking for myself after my retirement, I have walked some of the National Trails: Cleveland Way, Hadrian’s Wall Path, Offa’s Dyke Path, Pennine Way – a pastime and a challenge I can warmly recommend.”

Dr Andrew Thomas’s social policy research helped pave the way for major changes in the way the British state operates, ranging from the development of HMRC’s web-based tax returns to the ending of statutory retirement ages.

Yet Andrew (OE 1966-1971), who is now fully retired himself, started his working life in a very different field, going into retail banking when he left QE after his first term of A-levels.

“Although I enjoyed school enormously and made many friends, I did not enjoy lessons – at the time I was not very academic,” he said. He was a choirboy during his QE years at St Mary’s Church, East Barnet, where both choirmasters were QE Physics teachers! Pictured here are Mr ARW ‘Gabby’ Hayes (third from the left in the second row) and Mr Donald Fairbairn (sixth from the left, also second row), with Andrew, aged about 12 or 13 (back row, second from the right).

He left banking after three years to attend Barnet College of FE (1974 – 1976) to take A-levels, and then went on to read Psychology at York University. There he was offered a Social Science Research Council grant to pursue his undergraduate research. He later gained his doctorate, also at York, and was awarded the KM Stott prize for distinguished post-graduate research.

Andrew initially worked as a Research Fellow for St Marys Hospital Medical School and Charing Cross Medical School exploring, with a consultant paediatrician and a speech therapist, The transition to adulthood for young people with physical and learning disabilities (1983 – 1988) – research that was published in a number medical and scientific publications, including the British Medical Journal. He even published one academic article jointly with his brother, Roger Thomas (who was featured in the Summer Term edition of QE Connect), on how to prevent children from smoking.

Subsequently moving into social policy research, using qualitative methods, he worked for eight years for the National Centre for Social Research. He left to set up a new Social Policy Research Centre at BMRB/Kantar, where he was promoted to Director after a year.

In all, he spent 19 years with BMRB/Kantar, undertaking and managing some 350 social policy research projects. “While I undertook research for the majority of Government departments, my main clients were the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue & Customs and the Department of Employment. 90% of the research is in the public domain.”

He retired from the company in 2015 and went freelance. Fully retired since COVID-19 hit in 2020, he maintains an interest in social policy issues, but his focus in retirement is more community-orientated: he is a church warden, treasurer for two church councils, and chair of his local parish council. He is pictured, top with his wife, Mona.