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Zaki Mustafa was the “clear winner” in his age group in a prestigious financial journalism competition.

In his winning essay on the impact of technology on money, the Year 11 pupil ranged widely, starting with the first known currency in ancient Mesopotamia and ending with consideration of how modern financial companies could both use and abuse consumer data.

He won the 14–15 age group in the Young Financial Journalist competition run by the London Institute of Banking & Finance (LIBF) and the Financial Times (FT).

After reading his article, competition judge Claer Barrett, who is the FT’s Consumer Editor, said: “Zaki was the clear winner in this category. I loved his point about gambling with plastic chips and how this involves a similar sense of detachment to using contactless payments.”

Her fellow judge, mathematician, teacher, broadcaster and writer Bobby Seagull, praised the “very mature and clear writing for someone so young!”

Zaki was congratulated by QE’s Head of Economics Shamendra Uduwawala: “This was a well-argued piece of writing which gave an impressive overview of the opportunities and risks that come with the application of technology, including AI, to the world of finance.”

Reflecting on his success, Zaki explained why he had entered the competition. After starting his Economics GCSE last year, he said, “I wanted to educate myself a little bit about how technology is changing the way we view money.”

In his essay, he covered topics including:

• Today’s near-cashless society
• The rise in fraud and cybercrime, including the issue of scams that “impacts the elderly disproportionately”
• The rise of “entirely intangible” cryptocurrencies.

The 730-word composition concluded: “In summary, technology has provided huge benefits to the financial world, namely making payments far more efficient and traceable than hard cash. In spite of this, one must always remember to be vigilant, in light of the increasing risks that are associated with such a luxury.”

Zaki wins a cash prize of £150 and a certificate bearing the judges’ comments. His prize also included ten free places for QE pupils to complete the LIBF’s Lessons in Financial Education (LiFE) programme.

Neil Enright, Headmaster of Queen Elizabeth’s School, said today: “I know that the School community, alongside the nation at large, will be greatly saddened and deeply moved at the news of Her Majesty’s passing. We send our heartfelt condolences and loyal wishes to the Royal Family.

“Our School, founded by Queen Elizabeth I, has truly flourished in this second Elizabethan age. The past seven decades have seen momentous changes for the School, and in all our lives, yet through this time, Her Majesty has been a constant. She has been the nation’s strength and stay in difficult times and in good.

“An example of utter dedication, devotion to public service and unwavering commitment to the people of our country and the Commonwealth, she is rightly respected, admired and loved by people across the world. She was someone from whom we could all take inspiration and was in possession of so many of the qualities we value and seek to inculcate in our own Elizabethans.

“Whilst this is a moment of sadness, it is also an opportunity to be grateful for her lifetime of service and dignified leadership; for the impact she had on so many causes and charities; and to recognise how completely she fulfilled the promise she made to her subjects on her twenty-first birthday that ‘my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service’.”

QE pupils Abhinav Sandeep and Vyom Srivastava took third place in their age group in a global competition seeking to harness the power of robots to tackle environmental problems.

The pair, who have just started in Year 9, were the only winners outside North America in the Nature Recovery Robots virtual design challenge.

Their Buginator robot is designed to help farmers combat swarms of pests, thus protecting precious ecosystems while the farmers remain safely inside.

The School’s Head of Technology, Michael Noonan, said: “This is a tremendous achievement, and it is exciting to see that Abhinav and Vyom used their skills to develop a robot with a serious purpose, namely boosting the global food supply and helping farmers.”

The competition was run by REC Foundation (the organisation behind the worldwide VEX robotics programmes for young people) and technology company PTC.

It aimed to encourage the engineers of tomorrow to think about how they could help to tackle current global environmental problems.

The QE pair quickly homed in on the problems caused in agriculture by insects, especially locusts. Their submission stated that these “have been growing in numbers over the last few years” and were destroying crops and huge quantities of agricultural produce.

“Our robot has a few key mechanisms, the first being the front-wheel-drive to gain traction on uneven surfaces. The second being the pivot which holds a smartphone, which connects via Bluetooth to a computer screen. The third mechanism is the hammer, which pushes down the spray-can nozzle and sprays anti-insect solution. The last mechanism is the adjustable phone-grip.

“One weakness is that the spray can itself is not adjustable, so it would be more useful for shorter plants. One strength, however, is that there is a smart camera, allowing for possible AI development. The design would be feasible to build, although it would require a laser cutter and 3D printer.”

“This design could save tonnes of food, which could be used to feed people, instead of bugs. Our robot is unique because there is not currently a semi-automatic way to efficiently kill bugs.

As a prize, Abhinav and Vyom receive a $500 VEX Gift certificate.

For a more detailed look at their design, visit the Onshape 3D CAD website.

Old Elizabethan Priyan Shah and his family are so passionate about education that they have set up their own awards scheme to encourage the pupils of today.

Together with his parents, Dhiru and Rami, Priyan (OE 1991–1998) visited the School to present DVS Foundation Awards to ten sixth-formers.

The awards seek to promote a virtuous circle of motivation and success, together with kindness. And they are only one facet of the family’s philanthropic work: the foundation’s focus is on education, food insecurity and healthcare, in both the UK and East Africa.

Headmaster Neil Enright thanked Priyan and his parents for their visit, during which they addressed the whole of the current Year 13: “We are really grateful to the family for their generosity in awarding each of our ten prize winners a £100 Amazon voucher, and I know that the whole year group are, in turn, grateful for the great advice Priyan passed on to them.”

Priyan read Accounting & Finance at the University of Kent at Canterbury and then completed a postgraduate degree at the LSE. His father established the family’s commercial property investment business, DVS Property, in 1985. The company specialises in UK institutional real estate investment across sectors including logistics, automotive, out-of-town retail and supermarkets, as well as holding occupational assets that include student accommodation and hotels.

Having been part of the business throughout his career, Priyan today runs the company with his brothers, Julan and Prag. He is also actively involved in the running of the foundation, which was set up in 2012 to formalise the family’s giving.

Introducing its work in a special assembly, he explained that the foundation supports other organisations as well as operating its own programmes. These  include not only the awards programme, which was launched in 2021, but also its WhyOhYou personal development programme. QE plans to get involved in WhyOhYou during the autumn.

“Focusing on the individual (the name is a play on words for ‘YOU’), the programme is a five-week personal development journey that provides youth aged 15–18 with the space and tools to explore who they are, what they want and how to achieve it,” said Priyan, who is a member of the School’s philanthropic 450 Club. WhyOhYou is run by Rupal Shah (no relation), who was recruited by the foundation approximately four years ago, and by Priyan’s wife, Asmi, who has worked at EY for over ten years as an actuary and supports the global firm’s mentoring programme.

The Headmaster added: “I look forward to working with the foundation through WhyOhYou in the coming months: my thanks go to Rupal Shah for her work coordinating the scheme.”

The awards, set out below, cover a number of academic subjects, as well as extra-curricular activities.

Priyan and Asmi have a daughter and baby son. Priyan enjoys travelling and hiking. A long-time racquet sports enthusiast, he continues to play tennis and badminton.

Pupil Saim Khan drew on his own experience with QE’s Young Enterprise team to identify ‘character’ as a key attribute for leaders of smaller groups in a prize-winning essay.

Saim, who was in Year 10 in 2021–2022, took the top prize in the Sustainable Success Essay Competition run by management consultants Telos Partners in partnership with Young Enterprise nationally. He wins £1,000 and four hours of mentoring from Telos Partners.

His winning words focused on the particular nature of the leadership of small groups, where, he wrote, character was especially important: “You need to inspire and make people want to follow you.”

The competition, which was for those aged 14–18, gave entrants this challenge: Using your own thoughts, ideas and experiences what do you believe are the qualities of a leader that is able to lead an organisation not only to short-term success, but one that will be successful for many generations to come?

The competition briefing also included this quotation from United States Army general Norman Schwarzkopf, who led the coalition forces in the 1991 Gulf War: “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.”

Saim was a senior member of a QE Young Enterprise that offered ‘stress balls’ for sale during the year. The team took part in a Young Enterprise trade fair and also had a stall at The Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s School fete on Founder’s Day in June. There, they took a two-pronged approach, selling their remaining stock and running a Make your own stress ball activity, which particularly drew in younger boys.

Saim said that participating in Young Enterprise this year was “a great, different experience”, while the essay competition was “a reflective opportunity to academically tie it off and consider what I’ve learned”. He noted that he generally enjoys essay-writing too.

His essay, which included case studies, reflected his observation that, in the news, leadership is usually considered at a large or national scale. Little or no reference is made to the sort of small-group leadership involved in Young Enterprise, where a company might comprise only about 25 people. Leadership of such a group, and others like it, needs to be more dynamic and more equal, with less of a ‘leader and subordinates’ ethos. At this scale, he viewed character as being especially important: “You need to inspire and make people want to follow you.” By contrast, at a larger scale, not everyone will know you, and therefore character can be less important. “The CEO of Apple needs a strategy, but for regional managers it is more about managing people,” he said.

Other specific lessons drawn from his Young Enterprise experience that he covered in the essay were:

• How to include everyone in the group in big decisions
• How this creates unity
• What to do when things go wrong.

On this last point, Saim said: “Things go wrong quite a lot! For example, a week before the trade fair, we had under half of our expected stock. It’s important not to panic – do first, panic later.” Accordingly, the team simply got on with the meetings necessary to put things right.

“In other clubs, people share a defined passion, or it is more structured. Young Enterprise leaves it up to pupils to make decisions. We didn’t start all united in our interests, so there was scope for debate and discussion.”

With his company, decision-making was initially all taken by voting at the wider group level. “We realised as we went on that this was inefficient. We then had four–five people who took on leadership roles and made more decisions.”

Since this resulted in other members of the team feeling “less personally invested”, there was further refinement of the decision-making process, with company votes reintroduced for more important decisions. In short, he said, strategy was then determined by the whole company, with implementation delegated to a smaller group of leaders.

Saim was invited to a Young Enterprise Company Programme Final, during which it was announced that he had taken the top prize. “I was really surprised to win this – a national competition. I knew I could write a good essay, but you are competing against so many other people. It was a pleasant surprise to be invited to the final and I was then ecstatic to find out I’d won.”

He has yet to decide how to spend his prize money.