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A record 65 guests signed up to support Year 11 boys at this year’s Careers Convention – more than 30 of them alumni.

New workshops were added to cover degree apprenticeship assessment centres and being ‘future-ready’ in a rapidly changing labour market – one of the six key priorities in QE’s new School plan, Boundless.

Assistant Head (Destinations and Progress) James Kane said: “Our Careers Convention grows stronger each year, and 2026 was our most inspiring yet. The generosity of our speakers – particularly our Old Elizabethan community – creates an environment where students can explore their ambitions with confidence and curiosity.

“The event encourages boys to explore both traditional and alternate pathways, providing them with first-hand insights about careers and career development from alumni, parents, other friends of the School and higher education advisors.”

The day opened with an inspirational keynote from Kam Taj (OE 2004–2011), who encouraged pupils to stay open-minded, embrace uncertainty, and understand that career paths are rarely linear.

There was a range of expert panel sessions on topics covering seven key career areas: accountancy, banking & finance; creative industries & the built environment; engineering; law; entrepreneurship; STEM opportunities; and medicine & dentistry.

Pupil Sriram Muthukumaran, who attended the engineering session, said: “I personally enjoyed the panel and their insights, which really helped guide my journey and allowed me to network with people in the field I want to explore.”

The afternoon featured workshops running in parallel with a Careers Fair in the Shearly Hall, where boys could have one-to-one conversations with the visiting experts, taking the opportunity to ask personalised questions and receive tailored insights.

This was especially popular with the 114 boys who gave feedback, such as Isa Sheikh, who said: “Being able to speak to people in different industries personally in the Careers Fair was the best part for me.” Vash Mamtani agreed: “Having conversations with some of the alumni and getting personalised advice was incredibly useful.”

Overall, a large majority of respondents gave the Careers Convention a four or five out of five rating.

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England cricket legend Sir Alastair Cook joined QE Headmaster Neil Enright as well as more than a dozen Old Elizabethans and former members of staff at a special event in the UAE to showcase the new Queen Elizabeth’s School, Dubai Sports City.

The new school, which will open in August 2026, is the first to receive the go-ahead under the QE Global Schools programme – an initiative run by QE Barnet and its international partner, GEDU Global Education.

Former Test and One Day International captain Sir Alastair is GEDU’s Official Education Ambassador. He joined VIP guests from across business, education, sport and media, along with prominent social media figures, for the exclusive networking event held at the site of the new school in Dubai Sports City – a complex built around five major sports venues.

Speaking at the event, Sir Alastair said: “Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet, has a remarkable heritage of excellence, ambition and character. To see that legacy now being brought to Dubai is incredibly exciting. This school will give young people the opportunity to thrive, not only academically but personally, developing confidence, ability and responsibility, qualities that are essential for success in any field.”

Sir Alastair will serve as an advisor to the QE Global Schools’ planned élite sports programmes, supporting the development of high-performance pathways and strengthening the role of sport within the wider educational experience.

Mr Enright said: “We are making excellent progress towards the opening of Queen Elizabeth’s School, Dubai Sports City, next August, and I was delighted to meet so many local leaders and people of influence at this reception. It was also great to catch up with alumni and former colleagues now living and working in Dubai.

“There are exciting prospects for international collaboration and for gradually building a global network of Elizabethans, benefitting both the children in the new independent schools and our state-sector pupils in Barnet.

“We also intend to use income from QE Global Schools to support long-term educational excellence at Queen’s Road.”

The CEO of Queen Elizabeth’s Global Schools, Caroline Pendleton-Nash, said: “Our aim was to bring together key members of the media and the wider business community to introduce the exceptional education that will be available from August 2026 at Queen Elizabeth’s School, Dubai Sports City.

“We are gathering real momentum. Admissions have opened to very strong demand for places, and earlier this month we announced Dan Clark as our Founding Principal. These are important steps as we build towards launch.”

Mr Clark has held senior leadership positions at two of the UK’s leading independent schools, Repton and Marlborough College.

“Our hope now is that families across the UAE who aspire to a truly world-class K–12* education will look to Queen Elizabeth’s School as their school of choice,” Mrs Pendleton-Nash added.

She highlighted the significance of Sir Alastair’s involvement: “Having Sir Alastair represent us as an Education Ambassador is a tremendous privilege. His career reflects the exacting values that we seek to instil in every Elizabethan.

“Our location in Dubai Sports City means sport, health and wellbeing will be central to the student experience, supported by élite facilities and expert coaching. To have one of the most respected figures in world sport advising on our élite sports programmes is both inspiring and fitting.

“Sir Alastair Cook exemplifies the confident, able and responsible young people we aim to develop. He is an outstanding role model for our future students.”

*  K–12 is short for kindergarten through to 12th grade, reflecting the US school system from the age of around 5 to 17 or 18.

• For more on QE Global Schools, go to our dedicated web pages.
• Click on the thumbnails to view the images.

Old Elizabethan Samuel Akpan, who works for the Premier League, has received a special award at an international football conference in Italy.

Sam (OE 2011–2018) was representing the league at the Social Football Summit in Turin, where he was presented with the Leader in Social Responsibility and Impact Award.

The award recognises the success of the Premier League’s More than a Game initiative, through which it has committed £1.6 billion of investment into wider football (beyond the Premier League clubs) and into communities from 2022-2025.

It was, said Sam, “an honour and a privilege” to represent the Premier League at the summit – an international B2B (business to business) event held annually in Italy for the football industry.

Sam is a Communities Executive for the Premier League. “I am thankful for the recognition of all the work done by the team internally and through our network that goes on as part of the More than a Game campaign,” he said.

Sam joined the Premier League in September 2022 after winning an 18-month internship. On its completion, he was appointed to his current role.

After leaving QE, he read Politics and International Studies at Warwick, where he had a considerable impact. His work in social enterprise, sport and anti-racism at the university led to him being named among Future Leaders magazine’s 2021–2022 Top 150 of the most outstanding Black university students in Britain.

Sam is not the only OE at the Premier League. Piers Martin (OE 1987–1995) is Head of Leadership and Workforce Development there. Piers has enjoyed a highly successful career in sport, having previously led several sports’ organisations, including British Fencing at the time of the London 2012 Olympics.

Soon after becoming an intern, Sam spent six months working with Piers and his team.

“I knew from the start that Sam would be good because he had gone to QE,” said Piers. “He’s not afraid of speaking up and quite confident, but very softly spoken. He has a wise head on his shoulders for somebody who is early-stage career.”

• Sam is pictured, top, receiving the award. The other photo shows Sam and Piers flanking the Premier League’s Tony Scholes, Chief Football Officer; Joanna Pinney, Commercial Projects Manager; and
  Neil Saunders, Director of Football.

An Old Elizabethan who co-founded a $1bn-plus AI company urged boys to be flexible, to develop transferable skills, and to keep learning throughout their lives if they want to build successful careers.

Amar Shah (OE 1999-2006) said society is moving so fast that their career preparations are likely to be for job roles that do not yet exist.

Addressing a special QE Futures assembly, he pointed out to the Year 7 & 9 pupils that iPhones had not even been launched when he left QE – and that was only 19 years ago.

Assistant Head (Pupil Destinations) James Kane said: “Amar gave a really inspiring assembly on Dream Jobs. His message – with its focus on skills, being adaptable to emerging opportunities and lifelong learning – dovetails very well with our QE Futures strategy.

“The emphasis on transferable skills resonates deeply with our focus on the six QE Employability Skills – communication, critical thinking, digital literacy, leadership, resilience and teamwork.

“Thank you, Amar, for doing so much to get our pupils dreaming big and thinking boldly.”

The introduction came from an OE of the same generation, Asif Ahmed (OE 1997-2004), who said: “You might know that Amar is one of the co-founders of Wayve, the autonomous driving business that is widely regarded as one of the world’s (and certainly the UK’s) leading AI scale-ups.”

At the time of Wayve’s $1.05 billion Series C investment funding round last year, the then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “I’m incredibly proud that the UK is the home for pioneers like Wayve who are breaking ground as they develop the next generation of AI models for self-driving cars.”

Amar has moved on to investing in and building other equally exciting businesses.

Having already worked with AI-designed medicines, he is now focusing on a project to ‘democratise’ the MRI scanner to help the developing world– making the hardware cheaper to purchase, so it is more accessible, and using AI to mitigate the loss of functionality.

QE Futures is the School’s programme of careers and universities guidance & support. Its slogan is Find Your Path.

Amar’s own path has taken him from reading Mathematics at Cambridge to positions at Goldman Sachs and NASA, and to a PhD in Machine Learning. He has successfully founded several businesses.

His key messages were:

• Don’t prepare for one particular job, since many future careers are not even in existence yet.
• Build transferable skills. Adaptability and curiosity will matter more than any single qualification.
• Never stop learning. In doing so, you can help shape the solutions the world needs.

Amar argued for breadth of education – “every subject will impact your life”. He added: “Life is long; the world is constantly changing; learning is lifelong.” And he had his own clear idea of the importance of this stage in the boys’ lives: “School is learning how to learn (forever).”

Amar concluded his presentation with these words: “I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

QE alumnus Dr Mustafa Sarkar has been named among the world’s leading sports and exercise scientists in an annual survey.

For the second consecutive year, Mustafa (OE 1997–2004) has been ranked in the top 2% worldwide in his field. Mustafa was also seventh in the UK and 32nd globally in his field for researchers with their first publication from 2012 onwards,

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to Mustafa: as this ranking demonstrates, he is forging a very distinguished career at Nottingham Trent University.”

Stanford University’s World’s Top 2% Scientists ranking evaluates researchers based on how often their work is cited by others, their role in research, and their productivity.

Mustafa is an Associate Professor of Sport and Performance Psychology at Nottingham Trent. His research addresses the psychology of performance excellence, with a particular focus on resilience, psychological safety, and mental health.

He leads the High Performing Individuals, Teams and Organisations (HPITO) theme at Nottingham Trent’s Sport, Health and Performance Enhancement Research Centre. He also sits on the University Shadow Executive Team (USET).

He teaches sport and performance psychology across the undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes and contributes to the second-year undergraduate module, Practical Applications in Sport Psychology, and is module leader for the postgraduate module Performance Psychology.

Mustafa graduated from Loughborough University in 2008 with a first-class degree in Sport and Exercise Science. Before arriving at Nottingham Trent in 2015 as a Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology, he spent two years as a Research Fellow at the University of Gloucestershire.

• Mustafa was the subject of the first-ever OE Spotlight feature, in Edition 7 of QE’s Sports Bulletin, published in the 2024 Spring Term.

Three Year 12 pupils successfully hosted what is believed to have been QE’s first-ever Medicine conference.

The one-day event gave pupils the chance to hear from leading doctors across a range of specialisms – several of whom are involved in medical research – and to talk to current medical students.

In 2024, a total of 38 QE leavers secured university places to read Medicine.

Featuring talks and networking opportunities, the conference, called MedConnect 2025, was organised by Soham Kale, Surya Senthilkumar and Sharvesh Sudhagar, with support from Head of Year 12 Akhil Gohil and other staff.

“We designed this networking event to give our future medics a deeper and wider understanding of what medicine and its specialties truly involve – beyond the textbook,” said Soham.

“This was achieved through a series of insightful talks delivered by some of the most inspiring doctors and medical students we could have asked for, followed by a vibrant networking session in our atrium.”

Among the guests was Old Elizabethan Dr Akash Gandhi (2005–2012), a GP and founder of TheUKCATPeople, which coaches young people to help them gain places at UK medical, dental and veterinary schools.

The other guests and speakers at the conference, which was based in the Friends’ Recital Hall, were:

• Dr Mark Kristiansen – Head of Genomics (UCL)
• Dr Giulio Anichini – Neurosurgeon (Imperial College London)
• Dr Thendral Murugesan – Consultant gastroenterologist (Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust)
• Dr Jayanta Banerjee – Neonatal consultant (St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust)
• Dr Arangan Kirubakaran – Neonatal registrar (St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust)
• Gayathri Giritharan – Third-year medical student (Imperial College London)
• Vanathi Pugalendhi – Third-year medical student (Imperial College London).

Soham added: “Organising and hosting this event was a huge learning experience. From coordinating speakers and logistics to dealing with last-moment changes under pressure, it has pushed me to grow as both a team-player and a communicator. It also reaffirmed my passion for Medicine – not just as a career, but as a field built on human connection and constant learning.”

He thanked the speakers and the QE staff who supported the trio behind the conference, especially Mr Gohil: “His unwavering support and guidance made this entire event possible. Throughout this process, you constantly challenged us to reflect, question and develop – helping us grow not only in our leadership but also as people.”