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A Year 12 team has taken first prize in a prestigious German-language national debating competition.

It is the first time QE has entered this well-established annual event run by the Goethe-Institut, a global cultural organisation that is the German equivalent of the British Council.

The four-strong team from QE impressed in three earlier rounds, before eventually taking the title in the final, overcoming a team drawn from the near-4,000 students at The Sixth Form College, Farnborough.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Congratulations to the team on their great success against tough opposition in this well-regarded national competition.”

Assistant Head of Languages Burgunde Lukasser explained that the motions debated were challenging, as the topics and the necessary vocabulary do not form part of the AS course followed in Year 12. “Our boys, team captain Olly Salter, Theo Mama-Kahn, Jai Patel and Ansh Jassra, were incredibly impressive each time. They really made us proud!”

Languages teacher Katrin Hood, who also accompanied the boys, added: “Theo, Ansh, Olly and Jai are exceptional Germanists and gave eloquent and dynamic performances. Their teamwork was outstanding, and it was clear how thoroughly they had prepared for the occasion. The boys had received helpful feedback from the debate judges along the way, and made a real effort to fine-tune their performance for each new round. The result was nothing short of mind-blowing!

“The atmosphere during the event was lovely, as Year 12 students from other schools came to watch. It was fantastic to see so many young people from around the country chatting and sharing their love of learning German.”

The first two rounds of the contest, the Debattierwettbewerb (debating competition), were held online, the third took place at Dr Challoner’s Grammar School in Amersham, and the final in the Goethe-Institut’s London base.

The rounds, motions and results were as follows:

Round 1: School canteens should only be allowed to sell vegetarian/vegan food. QE, in favour of the motion, beat Coloma Convent Girls’ School in south London.

Round 2: The use of social media endangers the health of young people. QE, against the motion, beat The Royal Grammar School, Guildford.

Round 3: The mental health of young people has been neglected during the pandemic. QE, against the motion, beat Dr Challoner’s.

Round 4: The future of medical provision is digital. QE, against the motion, beat Farnborough.

The three judges evaluated the teams against four criteria: knowledge of the topic and argumentation; debating skills in German; oral expression in German, and interaction with the audience. The judges announce the result and their overall impression, but do not publish the final score.

“It was a great experience for all involved,” said Miss Lukasser. “The person in charge of the debating competition, Frau Vogelgesang, said in an email to me afterwards that they were still talking about the amazing performance of the QE team.”

 

 

Ten VEX robotics teams from QE – a School record – have won places at next month’s World Championships in the USA.

Their qualification follows a string of mid-season successes, including triumphs on home territory at the QE-hosted North London regional rounds of the junior IQ and senior VRC teams.

Congratulating them, Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Our robotics teams march on to ever-greater success, thanks to their technical skills, teamwork and great commitment.

“I wish them all the best for the national championships in Telford and then for Dallas in May.”

The qualifiers include six Vex IQ Challenge (VIQC) teams from Years 8 & 9 – Gearsquad, Nova, Eclipse, The Rubber Bands, CyberForce and Shattersquad – and four VRC teams from Years 10 & 12 – HYBRID, Vortex Invicta, Hex-Green and Hyperion.

In addition to its main current competitions (Pitching In for IQ teams and Tipping Point for VRC), VEX also organises a series of subsidiary challenges and competitive online events.

Among all recent VIQC highlights are:

• Five QE teams holding a top-20 place in national skills rankings. Five were also finalists in the World Online challenge (the School’s previous best was one), gaining them automatic entry to the World Championships;
• Gearsquad’s gaining of Excellence and Skills awards at the QE-hosted event, which secured them early qualification for the ‘Worlds’. At this point, Gearsquad also boasted the highest skills score in the UK;
• Nova’s victory in the QE-hosted tournament. Nova were also finalists in the Career Readiness Online challenge, finalists in the Poster Design online challenge and among the winners in the VIQC STEM Research Project competition with their entry, Camelid Antibodies.
• Eclipse taking first prize in the Theme it up online challenge, which involved creating and presenting a theme that ties the current IQ game’s objects, scoring, and rules into an engaging and creative story. Eclipse also won the double Teamwork Champion & Design awards at the Essex regional event;
• The Rubber Bands gaining a ‘triple’ – the Excellence, Teamwork Champion and Skills Champion awards at the Essex event – as well as being among the winners in the STEM Research Project with their entry, The Foginator, and a runner-up in the Career Readiness online challenge.
• Cyberforce’s winning of the Poster Design Online challenge.

Head of Technology Michael Noonan also paid tribute “Shattersquad for their sheer determination in increasing their skills score at the Worlds Qualifier event, securing one of the last seats on the plane to Texas”.

Among Spring Term VRC successes are:

• HYBRID winning the Innovate award at the World Championship qualifier event in early March, and placing second in Skills at the Essex VRC regional event;
• Year 10’s Panth Patel and Tharsan Nimalan on being selected as the newest members of their respective teams through their online challenge efforts; Panth joined team Vortex Invicta; Tharsan the experienced Hex-Green;
• Hex-Green’s number 1 ranking in the UK for Skills, with a combined score for driver and programming skills of 430 ahead by a distance of the second-top team, on 386;
• Hex-Green’s multiple competition successes: Excellence Award winner and overall runners-up at the Stowe Regional; Tournament Champion and Skills Champion at the QE-hosted North London Regional; Excellence Award and Skills Champion at the GCA Regional;
• Hyperion’s securing the Excellence Award at the QE North London Regional and winning the Tournament Champions and Design awards at the Stowe VRC Regional.

While examination commitments prevent Year 12 from travelling, IQ teams from Years 8 and 9 VRC competitors from Year 10 will all be heading for the States.

Mr Noonan looked back on an unprecedently successful term for QE robotics: “The excitement levels were incredible in advance of the day in February day when the online challenge winners were released. We knew this could pave the way for our highest-ever number of teams qualifying for the World Championships, and so it proved!

“I commend all of our teams for their valiant efforts to date, and remind them that our biggest and most exciting challenge lies in wait. Over a two-week period in late April and early May, these teams will travel to Telford and Texas in search of glory!”

 

 

I am 79. I am the oldest of three children. I was at QE from 1954–1961, the end of the E H Jenkins era. [Jenkins was Headmaster from 1930–1961].

My parents married in April, 1939, and my father spent most of the first seven years of marriage in the army. He was highly intelligent, but I think his lengthy spell in the forces (as Lance Corporal, since his then left-wing views meant he would not apply for a commission) drained him of ambition and drive. He taught at Tottenham Technical College until retirement. My mother had plenty of drive, but her formal education had been limited by lack of funds and a shameful but widespread prejudice against higher education for women.

We lived successively in a flat in Muswell Hill, a semi in Southgate and a detached house in Cockfosters. Money was always tight, to the extent that my mother went back to work in January 1954, to my intense dismay. Working mothers were widely regarded – and certainly in Cockfosters – as women whose greed outweighed their maternal instincts. She did a valuable job as a medical secretary for many years but, through almost all my schooldays, I naively felt that it was a serious stigma – for example, when we could not do an exchange with a young German.

My parents valued education above most other potential blessings. We read a great deal at home, and parental targets for us were pretty clear.

Having ‘passed’ the 11+, I was guided by my parents to QE rather than East Barnet Grammar (just down the road). This was largely because it was an all-boys school, which was thought more conducive to diligence and serious study. Entry to QE demanded an interview by Jenkins with a parent present. He was a short man with bristling moustache and matching personality. He left you in no doubt that, even if selected, you were probably quite unworthy of such an honour. I felt sure I had failed when unable to give him the meaning of ‘ancillary’. “What,” he feigned to storm, “Ancilla, Ancilla,” a maid servant? Where’s your Latin, my son?” Not I fear in the scope of my studies at De Bohun Primary School. Jenkins was perhaps the most colourful of the memorable dramatis personae of the Masters common room. I use the theatrical term because there was a range of acting talent across the classrooms.

I want to consider the quality of the School in the latter 1950s, how it fitted with me and the personal factors which underlie my assessment of QE and its influence upon me. The last first.

I enjoyed a relatively successful education over seven years. It culminated in a major open scholarship to Cambridge, which had been my target. I love(d) sport, however mediocre many of my performances, and QE was set up for a wide range of sports by the standards of the 1950s, in most of which I took part. It encouraged debating, which I thoroughly enjoyed and which, in large measure, I carried with me into my subsequent life. I hope I do not sound grossly conceited. I provide that summary because I look back from the standpoint of one who was generally well suited to QE, enjoyed the life it offered and derived obvious benefits from its education. Some others of my contemporaries did not share my overall enjoyment. They chafed perhaps at the strict discipline and felt we were living in he past, which, to some extent, we were.

There was no ethnic diversity. The boys came from a limited catchment area, largely within what is now the Borough of Barnet. There was nothing comparable to the near-universal urge to learn that characterises the School today. The values inculcated by QE overlapped with, but were by no means identical to, those that inform a QE education today. E H Jenkins had served in the Navy during the Great War, and his views on life, hence on the standards that should prevail in his school, had not changed significantly since. On the whole, they suited me, a keen reader then of G A Henty and John Buchan, but they would need a drastic revision if Jenkins were to lead the School today.

There were around 450 boys, a third of today’s quota, and I suspect we were more aware of those outside our own age-group. We enjoyed mimicking the posturing of prefects and the jingoism of the School Captain.

Looking back, I think QE was living, to a significant degree, on past, mainly pre-war, glories, when it was moved by the thrusting 30-year-old EHJ, in a blaze of energy, from its cramped, if historic, quarters to the present site, became the best athletics school in the country and, locally at least, a highly regarded academic institution which, more importantly, produced young gentlemen.

By 1954, Jenkins was, I now think, treading water and, with him, a large part of the senior staff, most of whom had seen war service. They could be very entertaining, treasuring witty repartee rather more than a scholarly forty minutes with Virgil. The wonderfully irreverent Rex Wingfield (‘Winky’ to all) was effortlessly diverted to first-hand accounts of the fighting in Normandy which produced a best-selling book.

J H Winter, related the story of the Seven Years War from the same script as in 1934 and reminisced about Jack Hobbs. There was dear Jack Covington who would welcome the most crass Sixth Form contribution to a discussion of Wordsworth with “Well, that’s a most interesting, indeed original approach”, albeit one which would condemn you to disaster in an A-level exam. History lessons frequently involved dictated notes, which enraged my father.

Whilst QE contained some very good scientists, the arts/humanities dominated its output of university candidates, quite the reverse of the position today. In a staff of 30-plus, there were, I recall, six full-time classics masters in my final year. My experience of post O-level teaching was of Modern Languages, English and Latin, but I believe the same lack of new thinking at a senior level applied to other subjects, though Sid Clarke’s progressive impact on Chemistry teaching was clearly an exception. Bright and innovative younger teachers seemed to move on quite rapidly, though that may have been simply the opportunity for promotion.

To summarise, Jenkins’ standards and values still dominated QE in his final years. The School ran smoothly and quite successfully, as regards academic results, but it badly needed the kind of shake-up that it eventually received at the hands of Eamonn Harris in the mid-eighties.

Why then, despite such a critical assessment of QE at that stage in its long history, do I still feel real gratitude for my formative years there?

As I said at the outset, I gratefully recognise that, whatever my perception of its shortcomings, it worked for me. I appreciated the latitude we were given as to what and how to study within the constraints of an exam curriculum. I respected the vast stores of knowledge of German literature and culture which I could tap from K L Woodland (universally ‘Klew’), when I took the initiative to do so. I liked the clear setting of targets by Gilbert Smith as to exams and university, and the challenges he posed as regards workload. I enjoyed the competitive environment which surrounded you from day one, not least because it taught me the sobering lesson that some others were far more talented than me, a lesson reinforced later by the experience of university.

Just as important, QE fostered freedom of speech and the principle that every opinion had a right to be heard, if not respected. Debating directly promoted such ideas, but they were encouraged in the classroom, too. Nobody and nothing was ‘cancelled’.

Perhaps, above all else, despite its austere exterior, QE was fun. For me that is encapsulated in memories of Eric Shearly, roaring in mock rage and always with a smile on his face. Masters could, in almost every case, ‘take a joke’, however stern their demeanour.

After five or so years at QE, I rather fancied myself as a mimic of Jenkins, both as to voice and vocabulary. On one occasion, whilst waiting for the master to arrive, I put on a brief performance : “Tyler, my son, You did the decent thing. That was a thoroughly decent show.” As I concluded, I sensed a marked drop in room temperature. A similar voice behind me added: “Not bad, Farrer, but needs a bit of polishing up.” The fearsome Jenkins turned away and walked off. He had a sense of humour.

At the end of my final term, for the Underne House Social, I wrote a parody of that year’s school play The Strong are lonely, which concerns a Jesuit community in a Spanish colony in South America threatened with takeover by the Spanish state: a perfect model for satirising QE. Each of the Fathers was an obvious skit on a master at QE. I played the Abbot, as Jenkins, with EHJ a few feet away in the front row. He didn’t bat an eyelid and applauded vigorously at the end. It was an image of QE that I took away with me and still recall with undiminished clarity.

Yes. It never approached the standards of QE today. But it was fun.

An alumni trio of Economics graduates gave current QE sixth-formers key insights to guide them along their university and career paths in a series of talks.

Zainul Jafferji (2000-2007) visited on three occasions, while Zain Gulamali (2005–2012) and Yemi Falana (2008–2015) gave virtual talks.

It was, Zain told the Headmaster afterwards, “lovely to get a chance to ‘give back’… always keen to help where I can. I still remember how I felt when I was in their shoes and how important QE has been in my life since I left.”

Zainul Jafferji

Zainul Jafferji,  who took a Master’s in Economics (MPhil) at Cambridge, visited on three consecutive weeks.

He told Year 12 members of the Economics Group about applying for and studying Economics at Cambridge, set out career paths and explained how to think like an economist.

In the first session, he told members of the Economics Group about Cambridge’s Economics admissions process. Not only had taking a diverse range of A-level subjects (Mathematics, Economics, Physics, German) given him an edge and enabled him to stand out from the crowd, but his German is useful even today when he is advising German companies in his role as a Management Consultant, he said.

He urged the boys to start researching universities and courses early, suggesting they use QE Connect to speak to OEs before applying. This was doubly important for Cambridge where the choice of college is important: he advised looking up a college’s financial situation, location and, perhaps most importantly (!), menus, before applying.

Zainul stressed the importance of regularly reading The Economist and other Economics materials to prepare for interviews and advised the boys to hone their speaking skills by getting involved in  debating and taking LAMDA examinations.

He concluded the session by telling the boys to expect an intense, independently led course at Cambridge, where they would be in tutorials either alone or in small groups and so have nowhere to hide if they had not prepared correctly

In week two, he outlined the four main career paths for Economics undergraduates: investment banking, management consulting, public policy and further study.

University of Cambridge career fairs begin three weeks after term starts and applications for ‘Spring Weeks’ (an Easter internship) start soon after. It was, he said, important to apply early for “ferociously competitive” areas such as banking and consulting.

Zainul was able to secure a Spring Week at Royal Bank of Scotland in his first year. (He maintained that the bank’s financial collapse soon after, in 2008, was despite, rather than because of, his work there!)

In his final session, Zainul spoke on critical-thinking skills. He outlined the key skills required to think like an economist and to construct powerful, compelling arguments.

Students then split into three groups, looking at topics covering macroeconomics, microeconomics and econometrics. One group tackled the most current of issues: the impact of sanctions on Russia on the UK economy. He helped the pupils to move beyond CPI as a measure and to better understand the worry of a wage-price spiral taking hold.

Afterwards, Economics teacher Sheerwan O’Shea-Nejad  said: “Zainul has been an excellent guide for the students through the process of choosing a university, thriving there, getting a job and excelling once employed.”

Zain Gulamali

In his virtual talk, Zain, who read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Warwick, said boys should start at university as they meant to finish, rejecting any thoughts of “the first year doesn’t count so I will work harder in the second and third years”.

He advised them to start applying for work experience immediately: there was no such thing as bad work experience, since even a boring placement could show them what to avoid.

Zain previously worked at an accountancy firm to qualify as an ACA accountant, but now works in the finance department of multi-national mining company Anglo-American.

He warned of the dangers of ending up in an unfulfilling repetitive career just to earn a large salary and impress others.

Yemi Falana

In his talk, which was also delivered online, Bristol graduate Yemi related how he had switched from Medicine to Economics at university. He said frankly that his parents were keener on Medicine than he was.

Yemi stressed the importance of applying for internships early – even during A-levels. His included two with Goldman Sachs, where he then went on to take up a full-time post as an analyst in 2018.

Now an Associate with the investment bank, he advised researching the work-life balance and job security of different roles carefully, remarking on how he works shorter hours than the deal-making teams, and appreciates the opportunity to have more of a personal life.

Taking part in the BBC’s MasterChef had long been a dream, yet Old Elizabethan Rishi Nanavati assumed the programme would not be interested in his vegetarian and vegan food.

But when the young dentist went along to try out for the show last year, he found that far from ruling him out, the MasterChef team were “actually quite intrigued: they loved what I did”.

Rishi (OE 2006–2013) went on impress in the first episode of the current series with his dish, a coconut, lemongrass and chilli aloo tikki served with a coriander yoghurt, a tapioca cracker and topped with lime leaf sherbert and a raw mango chutney.

MasterChef judge John Torode calling the dish “bang on the money”, and Rishi was the first of the nine contestants to progress to the next round.

His dessert, a dark chocolate pavé topped with a pistachio dust and crystallised pistachios with a cardamon shortbread biscuit, saffron caramel and a cardamom crumb, was described by the celebrity chef as “professional level”.

He reached the quarter-final stage before being eliminated and is very positive about the whole experience. “I loved it. It was definitely very intense. There’s a lot of pressure, you have to stick to the timings, and you are cooking in front of two of the biggest food critics.” [John Torode and Greg Wallace]

Rishi, who is 27, relished the “amazing feedback” and the opportunity to cook alongside “very talented people”.

He had told an interviewer ahead of the series’ broadcast: “I’ve been a vegetarian all my life and really want to showcase the potential that vegetarian and vegan food really has, especially with a fusion of pan-Asian flavours.”

Now back home, he posted to his Instagram followers last week: “Still can’t believe this happened. For modern vegetarian food to be on a national platform and having the opportunity to be the one to portray it. That’s a dream come true.”

Rishi told QE Connect: “I started helping around the kitchen around the age of seven or eight, doing really simple jobs. When I was 12 or 13, I started doing recipe development.”

Looking back, he can see that his time at QE helped lay the platform for his current success, both in his career and in his ability to cope with the intense demands of the show. “I think the pressure of School did set me up for future pressure – in a good way! It was a lot of hard work and I got used to working hard and working independently.

“And I had a very good time and made friends for life.”

Rishi who lives back at his parents’ home in Pinner, remains in close contact with a group of eight alumni, including two, Nihir Shah and Vishal Davda, who read Dentistry with him at Bristol.

In the past few years, he has started to share his passion for cooking with others, through food blogging and social media.

Asked about how he plans to balance his cooking and his dentistry, he said: “I would love to juggle both. Dentistry does give you flexibility.” After the excitement of the show, he is now taking a few months to decide how to move forward.

• Rishi is on Instagram, @dish­­­_by_rish, and also blogs at https://www.dishbyrish.co.uk