Viewing archives for

International football fever has broken out at QE – and while some eagerly await the results of a certain game at Wembley tonight, celebrations of soccer successes even closer to home are already in full flow!

Boys from four year groups – 7, 8, 9 and 12 – turned out for a two-day, charity tournament to raise funds for QE’s long-running appeal in support of a school in India, while later this week, Years 8 & 9 will be taking part in a sponsored walk for the same cause.

Over the 18 years it has been running, the Sai School Appeal has funded significant improvements at the Sri Sathya Sai (English Medium) School in Kerala, including the construction of a new building, various repairs and, recently, the provision of computer room that enables pupils there to sit digitally-based examinations.

Languages teacher Katrin Hood, who mentors the Sixth Form team which runs the appeal, said: “The Sai School is going through a very difficult time at the moment; the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the area particularly hard. The boys have, therefore, been very keen to raise money and are being really active, in every sense of the word, in showing their support.”

Year 12 prefects Vishruth Dhamodharan and Varun Vijay Kumar, who lead the 2021 Sai School Appeal team, ran the five-a-side football tournament on both days.

Day 1 saw Year 12 and Year 9, while on day 2, it was Year 7 and Year 8 who took to the field. There was also a staff match in which a (largely) PE departmental team took on a squad drawn from other departments, with the former securing a 3-1 victory.

The winning teams from each year group, not including any substitutions, were:

• Year 7 – Veer Sanjeev, Peter Atanasov, Olic Fan, Yashwant Reddy Sunkara, Thomas Young
• Year 8 – Hamza Pasha, Jake Owens, Ubaidah Rahman, Rudra Patel, Sharvesh Sudhagar
• Year 9 – Avi Juneja, Rushil Akula, Seyed Jalili, Hadi Al-Esia, Raghav Kaushik
• Year 12 – Ahmed Rana, Shadman Rahman, Abdullah Chisti, Hathmi Abdul Haleem, Avik Gupta

“The event has so far raised £260, with money still coming in,” said Ms Hood. “I am grateful to Vishruth and Varun who did an excellent job on both days.”

This week’s sponsored walk, which starts and finishes at QE, will see Year 8 and Year 9 boys covering 10km to raise money both for the Sai School Appeal and for QE’s Piano Fund, dedicated to equipping the new Music School.

QE’s Young Enterprise team won an Innovation Award after impressing judges at a trade fair with their eco-friendly phone cases.

Adjudicators at the Young Enterprise Trade Fair at Old Spitalfields Market praised the InDex Young Enterprise company for their creative approach and for the salesmanship they showed there.

The Year 10 team also won plaudits from an Old Elizabethan attending the fair. Ninety-two year-old Elliot Page spoke highly of the phone cases, commenting specifically on the quality of the fit.

QE’s YE Co-ordinator, Academic Enrichment Tutor Alex Czirok-Carman, said: “The boys have worked very hard on this project and, despite the interruptions inevitably caused by the pandemic over the year, they have produced an excellent product and, most impressively, have grown as a team. The judges’ comments show how successful they have been.”

The judges were from Mastercard UK, the London Stock Exchange Group and bandwidth infrastructure provider euNetworks.

At the fair, the team sold their phone cases to the general public as well as answering questions from the judges about their product. The cases are biodegradable and have sustainable packaging.

In addition to these initial products, the boys have also been researching and designing cases with attachments to make them more user-friendly for people with difficulties in gripping. These are not yet on sale, although work on the production process for them is under way. The team’s InDex name is derived from ‘Inclusive Dexterity’.

“Our team impressed the judges massively,” said Mr Czirok-Carman. “They were extremely active – and very successful – in finding sales, and the judges therefore commented both on the creativity of the product and on their excellent sales techniques.

“The fair gave the team the chance to see a different side of business, and they learnt a great deal about how to interact with customers,” said Mr Czirok-Carman. “It was a great chance to learn about how to effectively run a business. The boys spent time interacting with teams from other schools who were there and swapped some of their products.

“This was a great way to round off an interrupted, but productive year for the YE team, who plan to continue to sell their products.”

The boys who attended the fair were: Kyan Bakhda; Abhinay Kannan; Ugan Pretheshan; Anban Senthilprabu; Sai Sivakumar and Varun Srirambhatla.

QE pupil Adithya Raghuraman has been declared the national joint winner of a prestigious Shakespeare performance competition – after live-streaming his entry from his bedroom.

Adithya impressed judges with his animated rendering of Brutus’s speech from the play, Julius Caesar, in which the orator and conspirator seeks to justify the assassination of the eponymous Roman dictator to the populace with the famous lines “…not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more”.

Adithya made his inspired performance in the Grand Final of the English-Speaking Union’s Performing Shakespeare competition despite his plans being thrown into disarray when he, along with a number of his peers in Year 8, was sent home to self-isolate following a classmate’s positive lateral flow test.

Head of English Robert Hyland said: “His joint-victory is fully deserved, and a credit to all the hard work he has put in. Adithya is in my English class, so when I saw his preliminary performance, I knew we were looking at something good; in the preliminary round in December, he was the only student to score full marks – and that in a top-set English class. However, I don’t think we recognised then how good his performance was!

“In the Grand Final, in the face of considerable adversity, he showed maturity well beyond his years by delivering with real aplomb a demanding speech that combines high emotion with a strong appeal to reason. Performing in his room with no other audience than the computer in front of him, Adithya still made it feel like he was addressing the masses.”

In November 2020, all 192 Year 8 pupils at QE were asked to learn a Shakespeare speech by heart to perform in the classroom. They could choose any speech from all of Shakespeare’s 37 works. Speeches from Othello were popular choices – as a play pupils were studying at the time – and many of Shakespeare’s most famous monologues and soliloquies were performed, including Jaques’ “All the world’s a stage” from As You Like It, Macbeth‘s “Is this is a dagger that I see before me?”, and Hamlet‘s “To be or not to be”.

Teachers judged them according to the ESU competition’s criteria. “Even at the preliminary stage, the standard of competition was very high,” said Mr Hyland. “Remembering 25-30 lines of Shakespeare is in itself a powerful test of memory, but the idea of having to interpret it for the purpose of performance, and have the confidence to deliver it in front of your peers, is especially challenging. It is to the credit of the whole year group that they were able to rise to the challenge so successfully. This preparation was done without direction from teachers, or classroom rehearsal time, and the boys had full autonomy over their choices.”

The 12 best performers in the year were asked to record themselves delivering their speeches, and the top three videos were subsequently sent to the ESU for judging. “We were delighted that Ash Iyer received a judges’ commendation, and that Adithya was announced as a finalist – one of only two in London, and one of 22 from Years 7-9 in schools across the UK.”

The victory in the final was “reflective of Adithya’s wider ability in English, not only as a young man who has an extraordinary ability to infer meaning from challenging texts, but one who is able to communicate it through an almost flawless artistic expression,” said Mr Hyland. “He is a model for other students, both in his own year group, and in future year groups, of the standard that is possible.”

Adithya began his four-minute video submission by speaking of his enthusiasm for the “thrilling nature” of the play. He explained why he chose Brutus’s speech, rather than the still-more-famous monologue (“overvalued in my opinion”) of Mark Antony, which begins “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” and which follows immediately afterwards in the script.

Adithya said: “Brutus, who is one of Caesar’s dearest friends, is partly attempting to repair his reputation with the public and, I must say, he delivers such a thoroughly convincing speech that he has partly persuaded me to take his side of the argument.”

Immediately after his performance of the speech, from Act 3, Scene 2, the Grand Final’s online Master of Ceremonies, Jenny Stone, said: “I am convinced by that eloquent introduction: I shall be joining ‘Team Brutus’ from now on….good, good choice!”

He impressed a panel of judges comprising both actors and Shakespeare experts, which was chaired by Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall, former executive director of the Royal National Theatre, board member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords. Adithya received personalised feedback from one of them, Peter Kyle OBE (former CEO of Shakespeare’s Globe, and currently chair of Shakespeare’s Birth Trust). He was “very impressed by [Adithya’s] introduction, setting out the speech in the context of the play”. Adithya made clear what he was trying to achieve and – then went on to achieve – said Mr Kyle. And he was “very convincing in role”, particularly for his “physical focus and direction of intent”.

Reflecting later on his triumph, Adithya paid tribute to Mr Hyland for his support throughout and said: “I had not expected to even get a ‘highly commended’, so this was too good to be true. I was overwhelmed, and it took me a few hours to let it sink in.

“From the competition I benefitted in many ways; I came out a more confident speaker with new ideas under my belt and also with more knowledge of the greatest playwright of all time.”

He hopes to participate in drama at the School in the future and in further external events: “I would love to take part in more of these competitions, maybe in a group next time, as they are a lot of fun.”

Founded in 1918, the English-Speaking Union seeks to promote better communication between people of different cultures and countries.

Brutus’s speech

Romans, countrymen, and lovers! Hear me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear. Believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour that you may believe. Censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.

Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him. As he was fortunate, I rejoice at it. As he was valiant, I honour him. But, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honour for his valour, and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak—for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak—for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak—for him have I offended. I pause for a reply…

Then none have I offended. I have done no more to Caesar than you shall do to Brutus. The question of his death is enrolled in the Capitol. His glory not extenuated wherein he was worthy, nor his offenses enforced for which he suffered death.

[Enter Mark Antony with Caesar’s body]

Here comes his body, mourned by Mark Antony, who, though he had no hand in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying—a place in the commonwealth—as which of you shall not? With this I depart: that, as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself when it shall please my country to need my death.

QE’s Perspective team explained what equality, diversity and inclusion mean for them in a series of videos produced to help tutor groups mark national School Diversity Week and international Pride Month.

The videos featured each member of the six-strong Year 12 team heading Perspective, a pupil-led initiative launched last year in the wake of the BLM protests, which seeks to help QE pupils develop a holistic understanding of important social issues.

The films formed part of an online pack produced by Perspective that tutors were encouraged to use with their tutor groups. Members of the Perspective team have also been selling rainbow ribbons to raise funds for an LGBTQ+ charity.

Michael Feven, Assistant Head (Pupil Development), said: “I congratulate our Perspective team for the excellent job they have done in raising awareness and stimulating discussion throughout the School during School Diversity Week – an annual celebration of LGBT+ equality in education – and  Pride Month.”

In their videos, as well as mentioning LGBT+ issues such as mental health and the use of pronouns, the Perspective team members touched on other important topics, such as Black Lives Matter and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Ambassador Janison Jeyaventhan told his fellow Elizabethans that he hoped to make them more aware of these issues: “I wanted to be an EDI Ambassador to… inspire people like you to be part of that change for a better tomorrow.”

EDI Ambassador Ciaran Price highlighted mental health, pointing to statistics indicating that twice as many LGBT+ school pupils struggle with their mental health compared to the schools’ population at large. “Think about that: two times more likely in a year when lockdowns and a changing world has added so much stress to already-hectic school lives.”

Manomay Lala-Raykar, one of two School Vice-Captains with responsibility for managing EDI, urged fellow pupils to do some “very small things…to make a difference”, such as donating to LGBT+ causes, “educating friends and family” and changing the language that they use.

EDI Ambassador Jayden Savage felt there remained more to do: “As students who go to an all-boys School and are in our own little bubble that seems protected and blind to issues that don’t affect us, there is a lot we miss out on and don’t engage with.”

Christan Emmanuel, who is also an EDI Ambassador, said he valued Perspective because it increased empathy among his fellow pupils. And Aadarsh Khimasia, a School Vice-Captain with responsibility for managing EDI, said he appreciated it because Perspective provided “an equal say and opportunity to speak to all”, giving him the chance, for example, to talk about animal rights, a subject close to his heart.

In addition to the videos, the pack featured five questions designed to foster discussion within tutor groups:

1. What actions could we take as individuals to ensure that our school is inclusive for those identifying as LGBTQ+?
2. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of going to a single-sex school in terms of promoting equality, diversity & inclusion?
3. Is it important to be aware of different issues and causes around the world? Why?/Why not?
4. How reliable is social media for learning about issues/causes?
5. Are there issues that you care about? If so, what are they, and why are they important to you?

The pack also provided links to: Just Like Us, the LGBT+ young people’s charity behind School Diversity Week, to LGBTQ+ rights organisation Stonewall, to MindOut, an LGBTQ mental health charity, as well as links to Kooth, an online mental wellbeing community.

The results are in, and Mel Giedroyc – TV celebrity, former BBC presenter of The Great British Bake Off and judge of QE’s very own Founder’s Day 2021 Showstopper Bake – has made her decision.

Mel has spent the last few days drooling over photos emailed in to the School as culinary creatives from across the Elizabethan community proudly showed off the fruits of their labour while gathering sponsorship money – turning their dough into dough, as Mel put it. They were free to make any bake of their choice, but extra credit was given for a QE theme or (with equipping the new Music School the focus of this year’s fundraising) for a musical motif.

Here then, in full, is Mel’s adjudication and announcement of the winner:

I’m truly overwhelmed by the amazing standard of these cakes. They really are showstoppers, each and every one of them – huge congratulations to everyone who did a sponsored bake. It’s lovely to think that the dough will become music….from crumpet to trumpet…..ahem…. from crumb to crumhorn……cream horn to French horn…….aaaaargh you can take the girl out of Bake Off etc. etc.

It is genuinely very hard to pick an overall winner from such a glorious collection, and several must be mentioned along the way. Full respect to Matthew Rose [Executive Assistant to the Headmaster, OE 2002-2009] who managed to feature his own surname in his bake. The beautiful ROSE on top of his masterpiece as a nod to the Founder – ingenious. Irfan Ahsan and William Joanes (both from Year 8) delivered scrumptious-looking and highly skilled musical note and grand piano creations respectively.

But the cherry on the icing on the tip of the top of the cake has to be

……drum roll please….

……(deep breath)….

The WINNER OF THE GREAT QE SPONSORED SHOWSTOPPER BAKE FOR FOUNDER’S DAY 2021 (that’s got a real ring to it)…for its stunning colours (the School colours, natch), his use of varied techniques (chequer-board insides and beautifully crafted fondant instruments to decorate) and its overall ‘stunningness’ and deliciousness….I wish it could have been a feast for my stomach, not just for my eyes…

….from Year 12 it is the one, the only, the star baker……Manomay Lala-Raykar!!!!

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Manomay!!!!

X X X

---

Bake and cake creators: captions for the gallery below (click on images to view)

1-2. Manomay’s winning entry
3. Mrs Shirley Wang, mother of Alvin Xu, Year 7
4. William Joanes, Year 8
5. Tunishq Mitra, Year 7
6. Tunishq Mitra, Year 7, with his bake
6. Aston Daniel Anup, Year 10
7. Akhilesh Karthikeyan, Year 8
8. Irfan Ahsan, Year 8
9. Mr Rose
10. Library Services Assistant Corinna Illingworth
11. Director of Music Ruth Partington
12. Rishi Watsalya, Year 7.