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Sixth-former Dylan Vekaria has been awarded a prestigious engineering scholarship with the RAF after successfully negotiating a rigorous selection progress.

Year 12’s Dylan received his Arkwright Engineering Scholarship, which is funded by the RAF Charitable Trust, from Group Captain Tony Keeling at a special ceremony at the Institute of Engineering and Technology, based in central London.

The Arkwright Scholarship Trust is a charity which aims to identify talented, potential top engineers, and to encourage them to pursue the subject at university. The scholarships themselves are awarded to high-ability students to support them through their Sixth Form studies. Every scholarship is sponsored by a commercial company, trade association, university, professional institution, armed service, government organisation or charitable trust.

Under the scheme, the pupil is awarded £600 while a further £400 goes to the School:  QE will spend it on resources and equipment. The scholarship runs over two years and is reviewed at the end of the first year.

Dylan, who is pictured with RAF Charitable Trust Director Justine Morton, can now benefit from hands-on work experience and support for curriculum projects, as well as the opportunity to be linked to a personal mentor.

Technology teacher Tony Green, who accompanied Dylan to the ceremony, said: “Dylan has done very well to secure this scholarship and the certificate rightly recognises his ‘outstanding potential as a future leader in Engineering’.”

Applicants are required to take a rigorous online aptitude test, lasting for two hours. After passing this Dylan had to attend a 20-minute interview before being matched with a sponsoring organisation – in his case the RAF.

The Arkwright Scholarships were established in 1991. The charity was named after the 18th Century engineer, Sir Richard Arkwright (1732–1792), who perfected the water frame and who is widely regarded as the father of the modern factory system.

For the first time ever, a QE team qualified for the prestigious Empire Mock Trial competition in New York, where they pitted their legal knowledge and courtroom acumen against some of the world’s finest young debaters.

The seven-strong Sixth Form team won their place after QE’s strong performance in the national finals in the UK Bar Mock Trial competition last academic year.

In New York XII (other Empire Mock Trial events are held in San Francisco and Atlanta), the QE boys achieved very close results against all the schools they faced and won one case, although the team was not among the overall winners. Most of the competing schools were from the USA. Empire Mock Trial also invites teams with a proven record of success from Australia, Canada, Ireland, South Korea and the UK to take part.

Congratulating the seven on their trail-blazing achievement, Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This was a very exciting opportunity for the boys involved and I know they seized the chance to interact with gifted young people from the US. Their success will no doubt inspire and motivate those in this year’s UK competition to give of their best and attempt to reach a similar stage again.”

Academic Enrichment Tutor Lucy Riseborough said the competition was a test of both ability and mental stamina. “Whilst similar to the UK version and drawing on similar skills (such as analysing and synthesising information, developing lines of questioning and argument, applying legal principles, learning procedures, effective communication and oracy) the Empire Mock Trial is based on the US courts system. The boys not only had to grapple with case files running to hundreds of pages (witness statements ran to 3,000 words each), but had to learn the different ‘objections’ to utilise (and defend themselves against) in the courtroom. With the ability of attorneys to choose which witnesses are called, the boys had to learn and prepare a lot of information that they would not, in fact, end up using; selecting the right information to deploy, and when, was therefore crucial.

“Each trial lasted about three hours and they were very ‘full-on’ – the boys had to be constantly thinking on their feet in challenging circumstances.

“More importantly, though, in many ways was the fact that the boys formed friendships and met lovely people from other countries – really benefiting from working with those from different educational and cultural backgrounds.”

The QE team were: Kieran Dhrona, Haider Jabir, Viraj Mehta and Saifullah Shah, all of Year 12, and Year 13’s Nathan Chu, Mipham Samtem, and Anake Singh.

Their preparations prior to flying to the US included a session alongside Chelmsford Girls’ Grammar School, during which lawyers advocated being bold with the use of objections.

Within the QE team there were four attorneys and three witnesses. The attorneys all both prosecuted and defended (depending on which side of the case QE had been allocated) and shared each case out between them.

“We faced four different schools across the competition, with incredibly close results in all of them – including against the American schools much more familiar with the particulars of the format,” said Miss Riseborough. “QE won the final case, with a very strong defence team – Mipham Samtem even managing to quote from The Great Gatsby when in full flow – although they were, in fact, praised by the judges throughout, with them commenting that they would never have known they were from a non-American school, such was their knowledge and grip on the procedures of the US court format.”

The case the trials dealt with was set in a fictional state called ‘Empirion’ and involved a hate crime against a member of the native people called ‘Empirions’. There was a protest by the Empirions who wanted a colonial statue taken down, with a counter-demonstration taking place by those arguing it should remain. Harry, an Empirion, approached Tommy Abel (member of the counter-demonstration), who was shouting offensive slogans through a loud-hailer. An incident occurred which led to Harry being hit with the loud-hailer and then supposedly kicked when on the ground. Tommy’s defence was that he had acted in self-defence initially, and he denied then kicking Harry when the latter was on the ground.

The case touched on the complexities around self-defence arguments, as well as on topical societal issues in relation to free speech and hate crimes. “There is, of course, a movement on both sides of the Atlantic arguing for the removal of supposedly colonialist symbols – such as the ‘Rhodes must fall’ campaign begun in Oxford – with the issues much-debated and hotly-contested,” said Miss Riseborough.

As well as arguing the substantive charges, there were side debates (a pre-trial oral debate with the judge) around First Amendment rights. The judges were typically experienced attorneys.

During their trip, the QE boys took the opportunity to do some sight-seeing, notwithstanding the freezing temperatures and the snow that heralded their arrival. After dinner on the first evening, they went to Times Square, whilst the following morning they walked around Central Park in the snow. On the last day they went up the Empire State building to take in the view and also visited Grand Central Station.

Reflecting on the experience afterwards, Mipham said: “The Empire competition is a truly international experience that all the members of our team greatly enjoyed and were honoured to be a part of. We felt we represented what Britain has to offer on the world stage: confident, capable individuals with open minds and buckets of enthusiasm.”

His teammate, Saifullah, added: “Empire afforded us both the chance to sharpen our legal acumen within the courtroom and to expand our horizons outside of it. It was a truly pleasant experience to compete on an international stage and share thoughts with fellow students from all around the world. We would like to give a special thanks to Wando High School from South Carolina, who were exceedingly kind to us throughout the competition.”

Communication and teamwork skills as well as mathematical ability were key requirements at the regional round of the Senior Team Maths Challenge.

The four-strong QE team scored 164 points out of a possible 172 in the closely fought event hosted by City of London School.

Representing QE in the competition run by the UK Mathematics Trust and the FMSP (Further Mathematics Support Programme) were Edward Hu, Bhavesh Patel, Suvir Rathore and Saruthan Seelan, all from Year 12.

The competition offers pupils an alternative way to express and develop their enjoyment of Mathematics, as well as developing teamwork and communication.

There were three rounds:

• In the Group round, ten questions had to be solved in 40 minutes
• In the Crossnumber, one pair of competitors was given the across clues and the other pair the down clues, although several clues were interlinked
• In the Shuttle, pairs answered questions alternately, with the answer to the previous question providing crucial information for the following one.

The QE team came sixth out of the 30 teams who had entered. First place went to Highgate School, second to Dame Alice Owen’s School and third to the hosting independent boys’ school.

Team captain Edward Hu said “We had a great day competing against and meeting other mathematicians. It was fun and we really enjoyed the Crossnumber, but were obviously disappointed not to progress further in the competition.”

Speakers at the Maths in Action lectures introduced Sixth Form mathematicians to aspects of the subjects not necessarily covered in the A-level syllabus – and even enlisted the seasonal help of the song, The 12 Days of Christmas.

Sixty-five Year 12 boys attended the event at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster, which was organised by The Training Partnership, an educational organisation specialising in study days at GCSE and Sixth Form level. This year’s lectures were:

• The 12 Days of Christmaths: Kyle Evans, maths musician, 2016 winner of the FameLab science communications competition
• How to build a 1,000mph car: Rob Bennett, Bloodhound SSC
• The Maths of weather and climate: Emily Shuckburgh, British Antarctic Survey
• Windmills of your mind: Dr Ben Sparks, University of Bath
• Closing the gap/ the quest to understand prime numbers: Dr Vicky Neale, University of Oxford.

QE’s Head of Mathematics Jessica Steer said: “Each lecture was inspiring in its own way and has encouraged the boys to delve deeper into the topics they found most engaging on the day. These lectures are a very good way of introducing branches of Mathematics and ways of mathematical thinking not in the curriculum and of showing the range of applications to which the subject can be applied.”

In his lecture, Kyle Evans investigated how many presents in total you receive from the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas. He demonstrated that the presents of which you would get the most were the ones in the middle of the song, on the sixth and seventh days (geese and swans respectively). He linked this to Diophantine equations, where the output must be a whole number. He also discussed Pascal’s Triangle and how one of the diagonals gives the total amount of presents you get each day.

QE delegate Adam Hassan said: “It was very engaging and interesting, as we were trying to work things out, rather than just listening to information – I also learned some good Maths tricks.”

Rob Bennett used his lecture – How to build a 1,000 mph car – to show how Mathematics can be used to solve problems. He talked about conventional wisdom and how humans continually push the boundaries by refining small features. He said that Mathematics will be used in the future to solve problems we do not even know exist yet.

“I liked this talk as I enjoyed the explanation about thermodynamics and how they have improved the car and the design of it,” said Year 12’s Dylan Vekaria.

In her lecture, Emily Shuckburgh, looked at mathematical modelling within the context of climate change, introducing the audience to a model where the Earth is assumed to be a ‘blackbody’ sphere (that is, one that absorbs all electromagnetic radiation falling on it), in order to estimate the surface temperature of the Earth. This model gives an under-estimate, but it is quite close to the true value, she said. A further model introduced an atmosphere and, more importantly, the effect of greenhouse gases, resulting in an estimate of the Earth’s surface temperature that is very close to the true value. She thus showed how this emphasised the importance of starting with a simple model at first and then building up to more complicated, more realistic models.

“The Maths of weather and climate showed effectively how easily understood ideas can be used to build complex mathematical models of real-world phenomena,’ said QE sixth-former Vincent Tang.

In his lecture, Ben Sparks started with the assertion that circles and spirals are everywhere in Mathematics, even though sometimes they are hidden at first. He then moved on to a discussion about rational and irrational numbers. He also talked about the mathematician, Mandelbrot, who decided to start at zero, square it and then add a constant over and over again. He explored what happened with different constants and whether or not the path of each constant converged to zero. The result was the Mandelbrot set, which boys were shown on the projector. Ben zoomed in on one section, but the shape never changed. Instead it kept repeating itself even after being zoomed in. Eventually, the computer was unable to zoom in any further, but this was due to the computer’s lack of ability to do so, rather than the shape of the set, Ben explained. The concluding message was that sometimes we should do Mathematics just because it is “cool and interesting”.

QE attendee Alejandro Lynch Gonzalez said: “I liked Windmills of your mind as it emphasised the beauty of Maths. I found it was the most engaging in terms of looking at the bigger picture and seeing how Mathematics is universal in its laws and properties by looking at its influence on nature.”

Vicky Neale commenced with the Euclidean proof of why there are infinitely many prime numbers, which, she said, is a very old proof. The boys were then introduced to the idea of a ‘conjecture’, which is a statement that has not yet been proved or disproved. A famous example of a conjecture is the Twin Primes Conjecture, which states that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by 2. For a period, mathematicians thought that it was impossible to solve, until one mathematician, Yitang Zhang, proved that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by at most 70 million. Mathematicians since Zhang have been revising and further revising his proof to reduce the number that the primes can differ by, lowering the number to 4,680 and then to 600 and currently to 246. Vicky concluded with the idea that if there is a problem you are having difficulty solving, you should try thinking about a problem you can solve that can help – or even thinking about a problem that you cannot solve but which, if you could solve it, would help with the problem at hand.

“‘I liked this lecture as it was about an interesting bit of new Maths that everyone could understand but hasn’t been solved yet,” said QE boy Ben Domb.

Two QE sixth-formers scored maximum marks in this year’s UK Senior Maths Challenge.

Bashmy Basheer and Nico Puthu, of Year 13, both scored 125 out of 125, earning themselves jointly the Best in School title. They were amongst 39 QE boys to receive gold certificates – up from 33 last year.

A further 55 boys were awarded silver, and 29 bronze. The top 40% of participants in the competition are awarded gold, silver and bronze certificates in the ratio 1:2:3.

The Best in Year 12 title went to Suvir Rathore, who scored 102.

Nine boys, including Bashmy, Nico and Suvir, have qualified for the British Mathematical Olympiad and a further 30 go through to the competition’s other follow-on round, the Senior Kangaroo. To qualify for the Olympiad, candidates must score at least 102 points, while for the Kangaroo, they need at least 83 points.

Nico said: “There were lots of geometry questions, which I found really interesting to solve.”

Congratulating the successful competitors, Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung said: “Many of the boys who have qualified through to the follow-on rounds have been members of QE’s Élite Maths group for a number of years and are now passing on their experience and wisdom through mentoring students in Years 9 to 11.”

• Sample question:
  The positive integer 2018 is the product of two primes. What is the sum of these two primes?
  A 1001 B 1010 C 1011 D1100 E 1101
  Answer:
  2 + 1009 = 1011 so C

A QE old boy treated a group of Year 12 historians to an expert curator’s perspective when they visited the World War I centenary exhibition at the Imperial War Museum (IWM).

Ian Kikuchi (OE 1997-2004) is an historian at the museum who curated its exhibition commemorating the centenary of the Armistice. He took the boys on a tour of the exhibits and talked about his career and the IWM.

The exhibition itself addressed the main issues of the war, from why it started, to what life was really like in the trenches, and the role of women.

Head of History Helen MacGregor said: “It was a great exhibition and a doubly-rewarding visit. History is an abstract subject, so it was fascinating to hear from Ian both about the war and about the decisions made as to what to actually exhibit and the complexities of such a massive undertaking. The boys particularly enjoyed hearing how the tank and planes were moved into the museum – which involved removing ceilings.”

Mr Kikuchi, who took a BA in War Studies from King’s, answered questions after the tour. “The boys really enjoyed hearing how he progressed from working in the IWM’s HMS Belfast shop (while he was at university), to becoming the world expert on aspects of the war in Burma in World War II,” said Miss MacGregor.