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Tackling topics as diverse as privacy laws, genome-editing and social equality, 50 sixth-formers from QE and North London Collegiate School enjoyed ample opportunity to air and develop their views in a joint academic symposium.

The event, hosted by QE, is an important means of helping final-year pupils with their applications to university, said organiser Nisha Mayer, who is QE’s Head of Pupil Enrichment.

“All these students expect to be interviewed in the coming weeks for places in Medicine, Science, Engineering, Law, PPE [Oxford’s Philosophy, Politics and Economics course] and Economics,” said Mrs Mayer. “This annual academic symposium collaboration with NLCS is invaluable in this preparation.”

QE’s Assistant Head (Pupil Development) Crispin Bonham-Carter fired up the participants with a rousing welcoming address: “I reminded them that ‘symposia’ were ancient Greek dining parties where young adults were expected to debate important ideas and subject themselves to scrutiny.

“I also pointed out that the Greek word for debate, ‘agon’, gives us both ‘agony’ but also ‘protagonist’ – and I urged on them the importance of performance when stepping into the role of the ‘public expert’.”

Mr Bonham-Carter added that the symposium participants should not be afraid to ask if they had any questions, “as it was unlikely they would be alone”.

Reflecting on a successful event afterwards, Mrs Mayer said: “The students were highly engaged and articulate, the discussions constructive and purposeful.”

QE pupils engage in a number of such symposia throughout the year, aimed at different year groups, all with the aim of encouraging independent thinking. Headmaster Neil Enright highlighted their importance when he was invited recently to give a speech on scholarship to the Girls’ Schools Association’s Annual Conference for Heads.

“Discussion and collaboration are key features of our partnership work with other schools,” he told the independent school heads assembled in Bristol. “These sessions have obviously played an important role in enabling our young men to engage with equally capable, and often more confident, young women, but also in furthering academic curiosity.

“Of course, the stimulation of the source material is challenging in its own right, whether it is developing critical listening skills from studying Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky with Year 7, enabling Year 9 students to evaluate philosophical arguments, or challenging our sixth-formers to consider the nexus between water and community in a geographical study.

“Another key scholarly benefit lies in the socialisation that they encourage and develop – the ability to argue and deliberate with fellow students; to work together collaboratively towards conclusions; or simply to experience the cut and thrust of academic debate.”

Thirdly, academic symposia also develop action and responsibility, enabling participants to become those who can exercise choices according to their own values, and are not therefore “confined by the curriculum, or timetables, or teachers, or examiners”, Mr Enright added.

He concluded the section of his speech on symposia with these words: “We are all well acquainted with extra-curricular interaction with other schools – on the sports field, perhaps in the performing arts or academic competitions, but these collaborative academic interactions seem to work as a catalyst for inspiring further academic enquiry.”

Headmaster Neil Enright delivered a speech on QE’s focus on ‘free-thinking scholarship’ to an influential conference of heads from independent schools.

Mr Enright was invited as one of a small number of guest speakers at the Girls’ Schools Association’s Annual Conference for Heads in Bristol.

In his speech during a plenary session entitled Keeping scholarship at the heart of education, he set out QE’s work to cultivate habits of independent learning and academic curiosity.

“We summarise this approach as free-thinking scholarship – a relatively new phrase in the QE lexicon,” he told his audience, who were drawn from some of the country’s most famous girls’ schools.

Mr Enright spoke of the importance of maintaining a focus on free-thinking scholarship within a curriculum that is designed to be intellectually rigorous yet also to be exciting and to embrace worthwhile innovation.

However, he also highlighted QE’s commitment to its academic enrichment programme, through which it offers activities that go beyond the classroom curriculum and the requirements of public examinations.

Mr Enright pointed to the role here of the academic symposia that QE holds with local girls’ schools, including North London Collegiate School (whose Headmistress, Sarah Clark, also spoke in the session and through whom Mr Enright’s invitation had come) and The Henrietta Barnett School. On the day Mr Enright spoke, a group of Year 13 girls from NLCS were visiting QE for a symposium, while a group of Year 11 boys headed in the opposite direction the following day.

While scholarship might be seen as “somewhat of a heritage brand” – gothic libraries, decanters of port and the like – the focus at QE was instead on the fundamental attributes that underpin scholarship: “We must be open to expressions of scholarship which look rather different.”

And Mr Enright cited as a recent example the work of old boy George the Poet (George Mpanga OE 2003–2010), an award-winning podcaster, who opened the coverage of the 2018 Royal Wedding, performed at the opening ceremony of the 2015 Rugby World Cup and has been a regular panellist on BBC’s Question Time. “His work is now undoubtedly a great example of scholarship – a contemporary, urban, forward-looking, free-thinking scholarship,” said Mr Enright.

He also mentioned Anthony Anaxagorou (OE 1994–1999), QE’s poet-in-residence, who was recently shortlisted for the prestigious TS Eliot prize and whose “radical perspective [is] grounded in his experience of race and identity”. Acknowledging that neither Anthony’s nor George’s work found ready recognition at the School when they were pupils, Mr Enright added: “I would like to think that the School would be better placed now to value and support their brands of free-thinking scholarship.”

To inspire and facilitate scholarship in their pupils, schools must identify, attract and then develop staff who have a “deep-rooted interest to continue to explore their [own] interests” and can model “scholastic traits”.

“Our boys expect their teachers to be on top of not just the course material, but the hot topics in their field, the emerging theories and technologies,” he said.

One significant factor in QE’s success in supporting staff had been the work of many departments with the Prince’s Teaching Institute, which, Mr Enright said, had “proved a great way of stretching our subject leaders, giving them the opportunity to collaborate across different schools, learn from best practice and then train others”. Several staff, including Mr Enright himself as well as Assistant Head Sarah Westcott, Head of History & Politics Helen MacGregor and Head of Mathematics Jessica Steer, have current leadership roles within the charity.

Mr Enright set out several other steps the School takes to promote scholarship, all of which, he said aimed at “trying to create and maintain a culture whereby curiosity, ambitious thinking and intellectual risk-taking feels safe”.

Sixth-former James Tan has become the first QE pupil for many years – and possibly ever – to win a prize from the prestigious Mathematical Association.

Further Mathematics AS-level student James, of Year 12, submitted solutions to both of the Student Problems published in the summer issue of the association’s journal, The Mathematical Gazette, and has now heard that he was won first prize.

Congratulating James, Mathematics teacher Phillip Brady said: “Nobody in the Mathematics department can remember any boy here winning this prize before, so James has broken new ground for QE with this achievement.

“The problems are designed to be accessible to students taking Maths A-level, but solving them usually requires careful thought or cunning methods!”

Established in 1871, the MA is the oldest subject association in the UK. Its journal, which is published three times a year, has a readership that includes teachers and college and university lecturers worldwide.

Entries to the problems come in from bright young mathematicians around the world. A first prize of £25 and second prize of £20 are awarded for the best solutions to the Student Problems; entrants can submit solutions to both of them or just to one.

James heard from puzzle page editor Stan Dolan, who is the author of several books aimed at A-level students, that he had won the first prize.

The letter from Mr Dolan, a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (FIMA), states: “The most elegant and simplest answer was given by James. The solutions […] were especially good in terms of clarity and a well-expressed generalisation.”

Here is one of the questions James tackled: If a 5-digit number is a multiple of 271 then so are all numbers given by cyclic permutations of the digits of the number. Explain this property and generalise the result.

The second question involved giving the area of a hypotenuse triangle that was surrounded by three circles of varying sizes.

• QE boys and their families can read the current set of Mathematical Association Student Problems, together with a selection of easier puzzles, on the Puzzle of the Fortnight page in the dedicated eQE private web portal.

Two-and-a-half years after he founded it, sixth-former Ryan Ratnam’s website and online journal has stood the test of time as a platform for young people to write about what really interests them.

Many QE boys and pupils from other leading schools have taken the opportunity to express themselves through the Scope Project. And, with no word limits imposed and considerable editorial freedom allowed, the range of topics explored is eclectic indeed, from Venezuelan hyperinflation to Was Thomas Hardy really a feminist, from Are we living in reality? to Facebook’s currency, Libra.

Ryan was inspired to start Scope when he was part of a joint academic symposium with North London Collegiate School (NLCS) in Year 10, where he and his friends relished the experience of sharing ideas. He wanted to create a channel through which young people could share their interests and make topics digestible to others: “news for young people, by young people”, as he says.

The scope of Scope has now broadened, as Ryan also runs an affiliated society – Microscope – for QE boys in Years 7 & 8. The society allows them to investigate the topics that interest them, to share their perspectives on news and issues and to gain writing experience. Ryan meets with them fortnightly, when they discuss the news (in different sectors) and work on writing techniques. The boys then produce pieces each half-term for a dedicated section of the website.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to Ryan for his leadership in creating the Scope Project and for the persistence and hard work he and his team have shown to ensure its success over time.

“What he has done coheres very well with our aim as a School of nurturing free-thinking scholarship among the boys, encouraging them to go beyond the confines of their classroom syllabus, pursuing their own genuine academic interests.”

Ryan, who is Chief Editor, received some help early on from his then-Head of Year, Kimberly Jackson (now an Assistant Head at The Henrietta Barnett School (HBS)) and Nisha Mayer, QE’s Head of Academic Enrichment, who helped him set up the project and promote it through the eQE portal.

The project was developed collaboratively, with pupils from NLCS, HBS and Westminster School all involved alongside QE boys with taking the concept of the symposium and translating that to an online editorial platform.

The website covers a broad range of areas. The designated menu areas are: current affairs; entertainment; history; literature; languages; philosophy/psychology; sport; science and technology. The ‘languages’ tab features writing in foreign languages including, to date, French, German and Spanish.

The main goal is for people to write about what really interests them personally. Ryan, for example, has written on Japanese history – “Something I would be unlikely to talk about in the playground!

“For me, free-thinking scholarship is about being open to new ideas and perspectives, going beyond the curriculum”.

The articles and features are looking to test opinion and challenge it, he says, citing as an example a piece on feminism, accompanied by a survey to interrogate young people’s knowledge an perceptions of this subject. “Opinions shape your character; figuring out what you think is part of maturing.”

Scope gives young people the opportunity to learn about new things and a place to share their ideas, slightly removed from the pressures of social media. “Lots of people get their news from social media, with the flashy headlines and fear-mongering.” Scope seeks to avoid the dangers of ‘sound-bite’ journalism through its long-read format for the main articles, although there are also bite-sized snippets in monthly digests on the website too, as a shorter snappier way in for some new readers.

Where social media does come in is through its use to broaden the reach of the Scope project website, with accounts currently being set up to help drive traffic. Scope’s readership has grown largely through ‘word-of-mouth’ and it is now being read in countries across the world, according to the analytics.

Ryan noted the editorial challenges around how subjective articles should be, particularly regarding politics. The editorial team, which includes a number of senior QE boys, look for some balance to arguments, but do not require impartiality, and many articles are, in fact, comment pieces.

However, he stresses that using evidence is crucial: “It is really important to ground your arguments in evidence – this is the only way someone can make what they say valid.” This is emphasised to the younger boys involved in Microscope, ensuring that the principles of scholarship are maintained.

Here is a small sample of Scope articles contributed by QE boys, all of whom are currently in Year 13:

• How the sun set on the British Empire – Chris Hall
• The cultural and historical significance of historical epidemics – Sparsh Sutariya
• The Tunguska Event – Senan Karunadhara
• Captain Marvel review – Josh Osman
• Buy an army for just $285bn – Alistair Law
• How should central banks take the quantity of money into account when determining policy changes? – Rishi Shah
• Crisis of the European Centre-Left – Alex Beard
• Thomas More’s Utopia – Ryan Ratnam
• Macron sous pression – Oscar Smith
• Do humans understand infinity? – Nikhil Handa
• The distribution of money in cricket – Adam Hassan
• Medical ethics – a guide – Deniz Kaya
• Strides in HIV research – Vithusan Kuganathan.

Microscope articles include:

• Brexit – An opinion – Ameesh Doobaree (Year 8)
• E-books – the future of reading? – Ady Tiwari (Year 8)
• Usain Bolt and football – Kiaron Lad (Year 8).

The next edition, which is due out imminently, will be the fifth edition of Microscope and the tenth of Scope overall.

The editorial team also includes Alex Beard, Vithusan Kuganathan, Rishi Shah and Alistair Law.

QE’s poet-in-residence, Anthony Anaxagorou, has been shortlisted for the prestigious TS Eliot prize for poetry.

After the Formalities, a collection of poems by Old Elizabethan Anthony (1994–1999) was selected by the judges among the nominees for the £25,000 prize, the UK’s most valuable poetry award.

The work, which is also a Poetry Society recommendation, features poems in which the threat of violence is never far away, looking at episodes including the pulling of a knife, racial abuse of an Uber driver, a father bathing his son in ice water and a schoolboy driving a pin into a map of the world.

The title poem is a meditation on racism and ‘race science’ that draws on the Cypriot heritage of British-born Anthony.

A poet, fiction-writer, essayist and poetry educator whose work has appeared on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, Anthony won the Groucho Maverick Award in 2015 and this year he was made an honorary fellow of the University of Roehampton. He has toured extensively in Europe and Australia.

At QE, Anthony is a contributor to the School’s academic enrichment programme, leading workshops and other events promoting and developing creative writing among the boys.

As reported by the Guardian, the chairman of the judges, John Burnside, has paid tribute to all the shortlisted writers, whom he describes as “some of the finest and most fearless poets working today”.

“In an excellent year for poetry, the judges read over 150 collections from every corner of these islands, and beyond,” said Mr Burnside. “Each had its own vital energy, its own argument to make, its own celebration or requiem to offer, and we knew that settling upon ten from so many fine books would be difficult. Nevertheless, as our deliberations progressed, the same titles kept coming to the fore.”

Guardian reviewer Jade Cuttle wrote: “Anthony Anaxagorou’s After the Formalities is a novel response to anxieties surrounding the growth of the immigrant-descended population, informed by his British and Cypriot heritage. […] The poet speaks out ‘against darkness’ to a divided nation and seeks the solace of home, whether assigned or adopted.”

Published by Penned in the Margins – a company producing new work live, in print and online – the anthology has also been praised by rapper, poet and political activist Akala as a work by “a poet at the peak of his powers”.

Anthony dedicates the collection to the memory of “my beloved grandmother who passed away during the writing of this book”. In a note of thanks at the start of the book, he also addresses his son, Tabari: “I hope when I’m old you’ll read these poems with the same fondness I discovered when writing them.”

• Previous winners of the TS Eliot prize include Carol Ann Duffy, Ted Hughes and Alice Oswald. The winner will be announced on 13th January 2020.

QE’s new robotics suite is already proving a major hit with the boys, after being opened at the start of term.

The dedicated facility in the Technology corridor has been created in a large former changing room and fully equipped to help young roboteers develop their skills.

It is expected that QE will field a record number of robotics teams – possibly as many as ten – in the 2019-2020 season, so the room is constantly busy before and after school, as well as at breaktimes and lunch.

This will be only the fourth year in which QE has been involved in the VEX robotics competitions, yet the School has very quickly made its mark on the world stage. In 2017, two teams won places at the international finals in Kentucky at the first attempt; in 2018, QE became the first-ever UK school to win a world title, and last academic year a record four junior VEX IQ) and one senior (VEX EDR) teams picked up a string of awards in the US, with one becoming the first UK team ever to reach the competition’s Teamwork Challenge finals.

QE’s Head of Technology teacher Michael Noonan said: “Enthusiasm for robotics here is extremely strong, so we are delighted to be able to offer the boys a dedicated facility, which includes the School’s first permanent EDR field as well as two raised permanent IQ fields.

“We’re all looking forward to another great year of competition nationally and, hopefully, internationally,” added Mr Noonan, who won the Teacher of the Year Award at last year’s UK VEX robotics finals in Telford.

In addition to the new IQ and EDR fields, the suite features:

• A new smartboard for displaying real-time game information;
• Six desktop computers for CAD and Design applications
• A breakout space with two whiteboards, to spur creative discussions
• A library of books, resources and past designs
• Ample storage space
• Wireless internet
• And a display area for QE’s rapidly growing collection of trophies!