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Fifty sixth-formers learned just what it takes to build socially responsible businesses in QE’s Entrepreneurship Festival, which was led by experts from the LSE.

The School hosted the university’s LSE Generate organisation for the all-day event.

The sixth-formers brainstormed the skills and qualities needed to set up and run their own businesses. They were also introduced to a range of scenarios and took part in practical exercises where they had to deal with unexpected events.

Crispin Bonham-Carter, Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement), said: “Our new partnership with LSE Generate is tremendously exciting: they have immense expertise and very strong connections, both nationally and internationally. I know our students enjoyed the day and learned a great deal, too.”

LSE Generate supports the LSE’s own students and alumni, helping them to build, develop and scale ideas, in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. It operates a year-round programme of competitions to win business funding, networking opportunities and other events.

LSE Generate’s other partners include the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Makyth Ventures, the Winchester College-based entrepreneurship group which itself ran a workshop for QE in the 2022 Spring Term.

Matthew McGrath, founder and managing director of of Emissary Partners, a global advisory firm working with investors, gave the keynote address at the LSE Generate QE festival and answered the boys’ questions.

At the end of the day, the sixth-formers even had the chance to get a taste of an entrepreneurial venture – quite literally, since they were all given ice-cream from a new start-up, Persian Kitchen.

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.

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.

Boys from QE picked up an existing pre-pandemic partnership with one girls’ school and staged a joint concert as part of their developing links with another.

Year 8 and Year 10 pupils from QE met their counterparts from The Henrietta Barnett School for debating – part of the well-established academic partnership between the two schools.

And QE Together – a recent initiative led by sixth-formers at QE and near-neighbour Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School – gained fresh momentum with the staging of the joint concert for residents at a nursing home.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “QE is very much part of the community and, as such, we value our local partnerships highly. Our academic links with HBS give our boys the chance to flex their intellectual muscles against their peers in activities such as debating, while the focus of our link with QEGS is on community action.

“In addition, both these connections offer our boys the opportunity to socialise and study with girls, thus better preparing them for university and careers.”

QE’s Head of Academic Enrichment, Nisha Mayer, said: “The Year 8s enjoyed an animated and enjoyable morning at HBS. They debated in mixed teams in breakout rooms before assembling for a grand final.”

Topics for the Year 8 event included ‘school strikes’ for climate change, and rich countries accepting more refugees.

The motion of the final debate – made up of the best debaters from both schools selected from the earlier sessions – was the prospect of extending the school day. “Unsurprisingly perhaps, the opposition won the debate, but the proposers certainly made an excellent case for making up time lost during the pandemic,” said Mrs Mayer.

Year 10 QE boys travelled to HBS for a preparatory workshop for their debates, which included agreeing on the motions to be discussed. The girls then came to QE for the debates themselves, with the final held in the new Friends’ Recital Hall.

For QE Together, a concert took place at Barnet’s Abbey Ravenscroft Park Nursing Home, involving musicians from both QE and QEGS.

Organised by QE Vice-Captain Dylan Domb, of Year 12, who is a regular voluntary helper at the home, the lunchtime event included music for clarinet played by the girls and songs sung by QE’s TTBB Vocal Group.

QE musician and fellow Vice-Captain Jao-Yong Tsai, of Year 12, said: “QE Together is aiming to foster greater connections with all aspects of the local community, and the presentation of a charity concert at a nursing home within walking distance of both schools was a strong illustration of such goals.

“Students at both schools have long enjoyed volunteering locally, and integrating the arts into both that and a project that brings the two schools together is but the beginning of a growing relationship with people in the local area.”

QE Together has plans for further events, including a Big Litter Pick.

QE had the joint-highest number of teams of any school or organisation at the huge 2022 Vex Robotics World Championships in Dallas, where the 48-strong contingent picked up a string of awards.

One of the QE senior teams made strong progress, at one point single-handedly carrying British hopes when they reached their divisional semi-finals, while the junior teams picked up a string of awards in their competition.

Eight teams made the 4,750-mile journey from Barnet to Texas after gaining their places through multiple successes both in the season’s domestic fixtures and at the UK national championships in April.

After the boys proudly joined other UK competitors in the parade of nations in front of almost 10,000 people in the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center, the two senior (VRC) Year 10 teams got down to competition in the first in-person world championships to be held since 2019.

Teams Hybrid and Vortex Invicta competed in the Engineering and Arts divisions respectively ­­– just two of the seven senior divisions, each of which comprised 70-80 of the best robotics teams in the world.

After a day of set-up, practice and scouting both of alliance partners and opposition alliances, both teams began the competition with some strong tactical driving resulting in some high-scoring wins: at the end of the first day of play, Hybrid had amassed four wins and only two losses, while Vortex three wins and three losses.

Head of Technology Michael Noonan said: “What seemed to boost the chances of both our teams was that, in the face of opposition from more experienced teams using robots with more functionality, they just kept their tactics simple.”

By the end of day two, both teams had five wins and five losses, and both were ranked 40^th. Hybrid were then among the teams to be selected as alliance partners by a divisional finalist, in their case the eighth-ranked team.

“What followed was a tense victory for Hybrid over good friends and local rivals GCA Gearers (from Greig City Academy, Hornsey) in the round of 16, presenting the sole win in this stage of competition for a senior QE team to date,” said Mr Noonan.

This success, however, meant they next faced the top seeds. The team duly threw themselves into the challenge. “Using fast reactions and excellent tactics Hybrid and their partners, Robohawks, took control of the match, taking possession of the game elements and pressurising their opponents…What resulted as a nail-biting finish, where the highly fancied opposition could not ‘balance their platform’ (normally a significant bonus) – and Hybrid had successfully qualified for the divisional semi-finals on a score line of 136-85 – then a best result for UK teams in VRC competition.

“The final stages of the match were met with rapturous applause from UK supporters…and Hybrid were suddenly the great hope of UK teams and mentors,” Mr Noonan said. “With this, confidence levels in the team grew, and they swatted the semi-final challenge of a once-again higher-ranked alliance with ease, with a score of 163-76.” Their “fairy-tale journey” then came to an end as they lost out to a very high-scoring alliance.

“They were more than happy with their lot at the end of the competition – a divisional runner-up and Judges Award represented a fantastic outcome for the team.”

With ten divisions, the VIQC competition for the Year 8 and 9 teams was even bigger. The first day saw most of the six teams hit the minimum required score of 120 to be in the top 30 of their divisions, and at the end of the day “an incredible four of the six teams” had qualified for divisional finals.

First up was the Rubber Bands team: even though their alliance partner’s robot suffered technical difficulties, they still managed a respectable score of 108 points. Next came Nova, who shot to the top of their rankings with a “fantastic” 142. Shattersquad achieved 133, while Gearsquad scored 114.

“All teams put in an incredible effort, but none managed to secure that coveted prize of a place in the world finals,” said Mr Noonan. Nevertheless, Gearsquad won an Inspire Award and a top-50 place for Skills, while Nova, Cyberforce, Rubber Bands and Eclipse all secured online challenge awards.

“A trip up Dallas’s Reunion Tower with a handful of silverware and a chest-load of memories topped off a fantastic day,” said Mr Noonan.

The boys and five accompanying staff also find time during their trip to sample delicious Tex-Mex food, visit the Perot Museum of Science and Nature and take in other Dallas sights.

Year 8’s Jeevan Karthick Thiyagarajan said later: “Travelling to the USA as a group was a great experience, particularly since we missed several trips earlier due to the pandemic. It was almost like we played dual roles – hard-working robot engineers during the mornings and fun-loving tourists in the evenings!”

Advay Bhat, also of Year 8, added: “Going to the Worlds and representing QE and the UK has taught me how to stay determined, focused and resilient. I met many people from different countries and backgrounds with different ideas, and the experience has truly been one of the greatest I’ve ever been through.”