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Queen Elizabeth’s School hosted its first-ever inter-school VEX IQ robotics event – and the QE teams took half the prizes awarded.

One QE team took joint first place with a team from The Henrietta Barnett School in the regional tournament’s teamwork finals – and thus secured early qualification for the national finals – while another two were joint second out of the 28 teams from eight north London schools taking part.

QE’s Head of Technology, Michael Noonan, said the event had been acclaimed by visitors as a “roaring success”, with the “action-packed finale of the teamwork competition proving to be the cherry on top”. One distinguished visitor on the day – Stephen Sadler, VEX mentor at East Barnet School and a VEX World Hall of fame member – had his own word of encouragement for the QE organisers: “Great show and the place was buzzing – well done!”

For the past two years, QE teams have not only achieved national success, but have also progressed to the world VEX IQ finals in the US.

Mr Noonan said: “The teams of Queen Elizabeth’s competed well in this regional round and can hopefully take what they have learned from this competition to further their claims to national qualification and regional success.”

The QE-hosted tournament involved a full day of robotics challenges, beginning with set-up and team inspections, followed by the two-hour skills competition.

After that, it was time for the teamwork competition, in which two teams are required to work together, often, but not always, with teams from other schools. Teamwork qualification matches took place either side of lunch. The final hour was devoted to the teamwork finals and the announcement of the day’s awards.

“The real drama of the day came in the teamwork finals,” said Mr Noonan. With many of the teams, including QE’s Silicon Vortex, Cyber Storm and Hypercharg, performing at a high standard, there was a danger of deadlock developing, he said.

However, a combined team from Greig City Academy and The Henrietta Barnett School broke through “scoring an excellent 108 – at the time equalling the national teamwork high score”.

“This gave the all-QE combination of Gyrofusion and Gearsquad (already ranked as the second overall alliance) the tall task of breaking the national record in order to advance as the overall first ranked alliance. High drama followed, as a packed crowd of over 200 seated in the ‘bleachers’ voiced healthy support for the home finalist. As the robots came to rest, it was clear that a new high score may have been achieved – and a huge roar erupted from the stand. Judges, referees and volunteers checked scores carefully, and when the new UK record of 111 flashed up on the screen, the home crowd was delirious!

“However, the drama was not yet over, because the overall first-ranked alliance of QE’s Hyperdrive and HBS’s Rampage (also the current number 1-ranked team in the UK in the skills category) had to have their say. After some early setbacks in the match, some highly skilled driving from the respective ‘closing’ drivers saw a flurry of late activity, and it looked as though a strong final score was in the offing. One could hear a pin drop as audience members tried to work out if this had eclipsed the mighty 111 national record set just before – and so it proved, as Queen Elizabeth’s and HBS had combined to equal the national record and thus tie the overall competition!

“What followed was a spectacle so rare that it was not seen for the entirety of last season at IQ – a teamwork tiebreaker to decide the champion! The idea behind the tiebreaker is to set the same score, but to do it faster, as time left over can often be the deciding factor in determining the overall champion.

“First up went the all-QE team. In the rush to set a faster high score, QE’s double act were cruelly denied by a falling game element, losing them 20 points and leaving their final score at 96.”

“This made their tiebreaker opponents’ task a simple procession to victory: accordingly, they played it safe and simply did what was required to score 100 points, and in doing so won the tie-breaker and the overall tournament.”

“Our tournament champions, Hyperdrive, were ecstatic in victory, but also aware that this was not the end of the road for them: they know that more improvement is required to achieve highly on a national scale.

“There was some consolation for Gearsquad after their defeat in the tiebreak, since they came away with the Design award for their meticulous design notebook and attention to detail in the engineering process.

“Another award winner on the day was the newly-formed Year 8 team of Cyber Storm, for the innovative way they programmed their robot.

“Great applause rang out to encourage them, with the audience knowing that winning this award at such a young age when the competition was so tough was no mean feat,” Mr Noonan concluded.

The tournament awards went to the following teams (with their schools listed in brackets):

• Amaze Award (VIQC), GCA Gearers (Greig City Academy)
• Build Award (VIQC), MTS Terrorbytes (Merchant Taylors’)
• Design Award (VIQC), Gear Squad (Queen Elizabeth’s)
• Teamwork Champion Award (VIQC), HBS Rampage (Henrietta Barnett)
• Teamwork Champion Award (VIQC), Hyperdrive (Queen Elizabeth’s)
• Teamwork 2nd Place Award (VIQC), GyroFusion (Queen Elizabeth’s)
• Teamwork 2nd Place Award (VIQC), Gear Squad (Queen Elizabeth’s)
• Robot Skills Champion Award (VIQC), HBS Rampage (Henrietta Barnett)
• Judges Award (VIQC), HBS Rampage (Henrietta Barnett)
• Think Award (VIQC), Cyber Storm, (Queen Elizabeth’s).

The QE teams were:

Gearsquad, Year 9: Niyam Shah; Jai Akilesh Kaza Venkata; Nathan Woodcock; Darren Lee
Dipesh Dhavala
Hyperdrive, Year 9: Soumil Sahjpall; Aarush Verma; Maxwell Johnson; Adarsh Aggarwal;
Vedant Shah
Silicon Vortex, Year 8: Saim Khan; Aadish Praveen; David Wang; Ayaad Salahuddin; Samarth Deshpande
Cyber Storm, Year 8: Joel Swedensky; Sayan Patel; Hadi Al-Esia; Rayan Nadeem; Shreyas Mone
Hypercharg, Year 8: Pavan Kovuri; Shreyaas Sandeep; Chanul Athukoralage; Muhammad Shah; Chanakya Seetharam
Gyrofusion, Year 9; Yash Narain; Ashish Yeruva; Shivam Singh; Varun Srirambhatla; Vignesh Rajiv.

 

 

 

 

A mock General Election at QE has yielded a result that is starkly different to this week’s national poll.

With each of the School’s 56 forms deemed a constituency and all boys eligible to vote, Labour emerged from the QE election as the largest single party, winning 18 seats, yet it fell well short of the 29 seats needed for an overall majority.

Following discussions, the Green Party – which came in third place, with 10 seats, behind the Conservatives, on 13 – entered a formal coalition, allowing Labour to form a minority administration, with further support from the Liberal Democrats agreed on a ‘confidence and supply’ basis.

The fifth party taking part – the Brexit Party – gained 5 seats, with 10% of the vote, in contrast to the actual General Election, in which the party failed to take a single constituency.

Voter turnout was more than 20% higher than in Thursday’s national vote: 88%, or 1,116, boys voted.

There was particular excitement in three forms where the results were tied. The winners of these seats were decided by the toss of a coin between the two tied parties. The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats each won one seat in this way.

Headmaster Neil Enright, in his capacity as Chief Returning Officer, declared the results.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, each of the five parties taking part reviewed the full manifestos produced by their respective parties in the General Election and picked out five key pledges for the QE campaign. These were then arranged on posters that were displayed at the School.

A lunchtime hustings was held earlier this month in the Main School Hall at which boys had the opportunity to question the five candidates, who were (pictured left-right): Year 9’s Ugan Pretheshan (Brexit); Year 11’s Ethan John (Conservative); Year 13’s Haider Jabir (Green); Year 12’s Eeshan Banerjee (Labour) and Year 11’s Sultan Khokhar (Lib Dem). The debate was chaired by Politics teacher Liam Hargadon – billed as QE’s answer to Andrew Neil – although since all the candidates turned up for the event, no ice sculptures were used!

Judges in the prestigious Empire Mock Trial competition held in New York praised a nine-strong QE team for their performance in courtroom battles against leading American and Chinese schools.

Despite having to grapple with a legal system that can be very different from the English system, the Sixth Form team competed strongly, gaining both votes and plaudits from the adjudicators, reports their coach, Jack Robertson, Head of Philosophy, Religion and Society.

One of the team, Dharrshan Viramuthu, of Year 12, reflected afterwards on a “fantastic, unforgettable experience. Dharrshan said: “Visiting a city like New York was amazing, as was the opportunity to compete against the best Mock Trial teams in the US and across the world.”

Saifullah Shah, of Year 13, added: “Beyond its academic rigour, the entire Empire experience was unforgettable, largely due to the remarkable kindness of our fellow competitors. Numerous friendships were made both amongst our own team as well as with our opponents.”

The weekend event was held at Southern District Courthouse in downtown New York. Mr Robertson and his fellow coach, Chemistry teacher Charani Dharmawardhane, travelled with the team.

“The Empire Mock Trial follows the US legal system, so students had to learn a lot about how it works,” he said. “They had to familiarise themselves with, and then be able to apply, a range of case law, as well as adapt to various procedural aspects of being in a US court room. In particular, adapting to the use of objections was a challenge, but one the team rose to well.”

Their appearance in the competition centred on a fictional legal case between the Tam family and a company, Castle Construction. The construction company owned a luxury apartment block on the fictional island of Empirion. The block had some affordable housing units, one of which was occupied by the Tam family. Evelyn Tam, who was one of the occupants, became pregnant. Her child, Timothy Tam, developed dilated cardio-myopathy in vitro, and was given five years to live. It was then discovered that a chemical trichloroethane was present at the apartment block and that this could potentially cause heart defects. The Tam family subsequently brought a civil suit against Castle Construction, accusing the company of negligence.

Although the QE boys were not among the overall winners, the trip was a great success, said Mr Robertson.

“Judges and observers were impressed with the professional manner in which they conducted themselves, the persuasive force and clarity of their speeches, and the incisive manner of their examinations. They won the ballots of several judges in some hard-fought contests against schools from the US and China.”

In addition to taking part in the competition, the boys had the opportunity to:

• Visit the Met, the United States’ biggest art museum
• Take in the spectacular views of New York from the top of the Rockefeller building
• Sample the food at a famous kosher deli on the Upper East Side
• Go for a walk through Central Park
• Enjoy the atmosphere of Times Square at night.

The team comprised: Rivu Chowdhury, Aditya Mukhopadhyay, Saifullah Shah, Qaizaar Bharmal, Manas Madan, and Tobi Durojaiye from Year 13, along with Aadam Choudhary, Dharrshan Viramuthu, and Yuvan Vasanthakumaran from Year 12.

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.