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A new analysis of the performance of top schools published by The Spectator magazine further highlights just how successful QE pupils are in securing Oxbridge places.

In the magazine’s table, based upon university destinations in 2020, Queen Elizabeth’s School won the second-highest number of places at Oxford and Cambridge universities of any 11-18 state school in England and Wales, beaten only by Brampton Manor Academy in East Ham.

Furthermore, Brampton Manor and the four specialist state sixth-form colleges ahead of QE in the magazine’s table all had significantly larger pupil numbers, with, for example, Peter Symonds College in Hampshire having around 4,000 students on its roll, compared with QE’s 340-strong Sixth Form.

And the figures collated by The Spectator also reveal that QE had an extremely high success rate in converting Oxbridge applications into places. Of QE’s 91 applicants, 40 boys, or 44 per cent, gained places – a figure beaten (narrowly) by only one of the handful of schools and colleges above QE in the table, the independent St Paul’s Girls’ School.

Headmaster Neil Enright said today: “I am very proud of the achievements of our boys and of our staff, and it is gratifying to read further objective confirmation of QE’s outstanding success in securing places at Oxford and Cambridge.

“It is also interesting to note how favourably our conversion rate compares to other providers: we seek always to be realistically ambitious in matching our students to the courses and universities that are right for them. Through our University admissions Support Programme (our ‘USP’), staff and alumni provide help and advice for all senior boys, and this includes dedicated support for Oxbridge candidates.

“I should add that the 2020 figures on which The Spectator based its article are by no means a one-off: we have had consistently high numbers of boys heading to Oxford and Cambridge in recent years, and in August 2021, 39 pupils confirmed their Oxbridge offers, almost matching the previous year’s record.”

More broadly, the achievements of QE leavers this summer included securing:

• 26 places to read Medicine (with 11 of these at UCL alone, where the medical school is ranked in the global top ten)
• 18 places on ‘pure’ Economics courses – a figure which does not include several other leavers who will be joining courses with an Economics element, such as Economics & Geography and Oxford’s famous Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) course.
• 31 places overall at UCL, 11 at Imperial College, 10 at Bristol and nine apiece at Kings College London and Nottingham, as well as dozens more at other Russell Group universities.

Bolstered by the success of their predecessors, the current Year 13 are now fully engaged in the UCAS university application process and working hard to finalise their applications, drawing on the support offered by staff and alumni.

Year 11 boys had the chance to see one of their GCSE English Literature texts brought to life when they went to The Globe Theatre to watch an “exceptional production” of Romeo and Juliet.

During the visit – QE’s first live theatre visit since before the pandemic – all of Year 11 experienced a radical take on Shakespeare’s tragic tale of two young Italian ‘star-crossed lovers’ that eschewed romance in favour of an unsparing focus on mental health.

English teacher Micah King said: “I’m so glad our students got to enjoy live theatre after two years of disruption. They were able to experience an exceptional production of one of their GCSE texts, in a reproduction of the theatre it was originally performed in.

“Magic happened there: the students were simultaneously transported to Elizabethan era Verona, while the exceptional cast brought a 400-year-old play to life and made its themes modern and relevant to our 21st Century students.”

The performance, directed by the critically acclaimed young British theatre director, Ola Ince, explored the impact of emotional abuse and family feuds on the wellbeing of the eponymous lovers.

One notable addition to the Elizabethan-style architecture of the Globe Theatre was an electronic billboard at the back of the stage, displaying messages such as ‘20% of teenagers experience depression before they reach adulthood’ when Romeo is introduced ‘with [his] tears augmenting the fresh morning dew’, and “The rational part of the young person’s brain is not really developed until age 25”, displayed as Friar Lawrence marries Romeo and Juliet in secret.

Throughout the play, the boys stood in the theatre yard, or pit – the area which in Elizabethan times was the cheapest part of the theatre, with no seats provided. “This meant that sometimes the actors were moving between groups of students as they performed,” said Mr King.

The production, which stars Alfred Enoch as Romeo (best known for playing Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter film series and Wes Gibbins on the ABC legal drama television series How to Get Away with Murder) and National Youth Theatre-trained Rebekah Murrell, features modern sets and costume.

The Guardian’s reviewer, Arifa Akbar, who gave it four stars out of five, wrote: “…the love story is radically undercut and Ola Ince’s production is recalibrated to focus on Verona’s pervading social sickness and gang violence (there are not only knives but drugs and guns) as well as youth disillusionment and trauma.” She also praised the band as “the runaway highlight of this production”.

For his part, TimeOut’s Andrzej Lukowski’s said: “…I thought the billboard was an interesting idea in a mercurial show that often manages to be frustratingly dysfunctional and giddily fun at the exact same time….Essentially Ince’s desire to offer up two hours of hard-hitting social realism and two hours of wild escapist fantasy at the same time is not entirely reconcilable. Kitchen sink regietheatre* isn’t really a thing. But just because it doesn’t always ‘work’ doesn’t mean it’s not good: I loved the wild, irreverent roar of the ball [the scene in which Romeo first sees Juliet]; equally, I think Ince is on to something in choosing to earnestly highlight the number of references to suicide in the play – it seems quite reasonable to interpret the star-cross’d lovers as being depressed.”

* Definitions: Kitchen sink realism, which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, featured a type of social realism showing the harsh domestic lives of working-class British people. Regietheatre is the modern practice of allowing a director to determine how a play is put on, so that he or she need not adhere to the playwright’s specific intentions or stage directions.

Mukund Soni (starting Year 12) took first prize in the national Young Financial Journalist Competition with his impressive analysis of the decline of cash.

His carefully researched essay beat hundreds of other entries to take the top place in the 14-15 age group, drawing fulsome plaudits from the judges.

Mukund won £150 for himself as well as ten free places for QE pupils on the London Institute of Banking & Finance’s Lessons in Financial Education programme. The competition was run by the LIBF in collaboration with the Financial Times.

In his appraisal, FT columnist and TV mathematics expert Bobby Seagull wrote: “Excellent article! With a clear, nuanced view about how society might transition to cashless and a judicious use of data to back up key points! Sometimes, younger writers try to convince readers through an over reliance on stats, but this didn’t do that.”

His fellow judge, Claer Barrett, an award-winning journalist who has been the Editor of FT Money since 2015 and Consumer Editor at the FT, was equally impressed: “A fantastically well-researched piece on the decline of cash, which drew on international examples – and some from ancient history – to hammer the main points home.

“Highlighting the increased costs that small businesses face from using card payment and contactless machines instead of cash was particularly insightful. As well as what happens with digital payments if your phone runs out of battery!”

An abridged version of Mukund’s 830-word essay was published in the FT and he appeared in a LIBF podcast with his Economics teacher, Gus Ornelas.

Mukund, who this month was awarded a level 9 grade in his Economics GCSE, as well as eight other grade 9s and one grade 8, explained how he had benefited from taking part in the competition: “It was interesting to look at the topic in more detail, and I gained a much greater understanding of the benefits of a cashless society. I also think some of my other skills – like researching, finding good sources, referencing them and writing an extended piece – they increased quite a lot!”

Congratulating him, Dr Ornelas said: “This was a skilfully executed piece of writing in which Mukund not only investigated the reasons for the decreasing use of cash, but also highlighted the considerable problems that a cashless society presents.”

• Read Mukund’s article in full here

Year 11 pupils at Queen Elizabeth’s School today celebrated a very strong set of results, continuing a long pattern of outstanding success at GCSE.

In spite of the disruption caused by two lockdowns and other Covid restrictions, the year group showed great dedication to their studies.

Their results reflect this, with more than 19 out of every 20 grades being awarded at 9–7 (equivalent to the previous A* and A) and 85% at 9-8 (equivalent to the old A*).

Moreover, the results also demonstrate the breadth of education at QE: every Year 11 boy achieved the Government’s English Baccalaureate (awarded to pupils achieving level 5 or above in GCSEs in English, Mathematics, Science, a humanity and language), while there were also strong results in the Higher Project Qualification (HPQ), taken by 157 of the 184 boys in the cohort.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My warm congratulations go to Year 11. They have shown great dedication, resilience and positivity, evincing a mature and considered approach to their studies and to the situation they have found themselves in. They and their families should take pride in all they have achieved.

“These superb results are also testament to the unstinting work of staff during the pandemic in maintaining high levels of academic, extra-curricular and pastoral provision, and to their rigorous application of the Government’s Teacher Assessed Grade (TAG) process.

“It is gratifying to reflect that these results, together with our A-level results announced on Tuesday and the continued high levels of participation in extra-curricular activities (online or otherwise) all strongly bear out the conclusions of the Good Schools Guide report on QE published earlier this academic year.”

The GSG report included the following, for example:

• “[QE is] A place where boys can expect to get carried away with the collective will to learn both in and outside the classroom, the result of which is one of the most inspiring learning environments we’ve ever come across. An exceptional and rounded education that even private schools would struggle to match.
• “As for COVID, school is reported not only to have flexed quickly and well, but learned from it too.”

Mr Enright added: “The work that Year 11 have undertaken during the pandemic, including this Summer Term’s Sixth Form bridging work, gives them strong foundations as they embark upon their A-levels.”

A pair of Year 11 pupils’ design for a hi-tech, small-scale solution to the problem of faltering power supplies in developing countries won first prize in a national competition.

Anubhav Rathore and Heemy Kalam’s Flex-Charge – a device that harvests the energy of arm and leg movements to generate electricity – won the Wearable Technologies category of the 2021 TeenTech Awards.

The QE duo had been shortlisted for the final together with five other entries in their category. They won the category jointly with a team of girls from Leicester Grammar School, whose invention aimed to help prevent lameness in horses.

Technology and social media pundit Kate Bevan said: “I judged this category and all the entries were brilliant, but these two were outstanding…so thoughtful and creative.” Ms Bevan is a broadcaster and freelance writer for news organisations including the BBC, Financial Times, Sky News and The Guardian.

The pair were congratulated by QE’s Head of Technology, Michael Noonan, who said: “Anubhav and Heemy displayed ingenuity, tenacity and technical skill with their entry, which was an elegant solution to the very real difficulties caused by intermittent and non-existent power in some parts of the world.”

The two boys were among 95 young people – 62 girls and 33 boys – whose 59 projects reached the virtual final of the TeenTech Awards, which were set up to encourage young people to explore how to use science and technology to resolve real-world problems.

The final was hosted by veteran technology reporter Maggie Philbin, CEO of the TeenTech educational charity, and included contributions from celebrities with ‘tech’ connections, including Professor Brian Cox, journalists Kate Russell and Rory Cellan-Jones, TV presenters LJ Rich and Dallas Campbell, Stephen McGann (Dr Turner in TV’s Call the Midwife), Dallas Campbell, and Dr Suzie Imber, Associate Professor in Space Physics at Leicester University.

In their scripted presentation, the boys explained the rationale for Flex-Charge: “Our product is a portable, wearable device which converts arm or leg rotation into usable electrical power.

“Its primary client base is those in developing countries with limited access to power. We used advanced CAD [computer-aided design] assembly, prototyping and simulation tools to optimise our design and met the needs of our emerging, eco-friendly society.”

The TeenTech Awards were established in the 2012–13 academic year to encourage young people to develop their own ideas for making life better, simpler, safer or more fun. Participating schools are provided with a suggested structure and industry contacts. There are 15 categories.

All the submitted projects received feedback, while the winners also received a cash prize.