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Leading theatre designer Alex Wardle (OE 1983–1990) has been advising QE how to get the very best out of The Robert Dudley Studio – the School’s new drama and spoken-word facility.

Alumni can still support the project – including helping to fund the all-important lighting and sound equipment – by joining the 450 Club. But, with the tiered seating due to be installed next term, time is running out if you would like your name on a studio seat!

Alex said: “I was keen to help the School make good decisions, as a well-planned drama space can be such an inspiration to young minds. As one of your alumni who hasn’t ended up being a multi-millionaire, I’m afraid all I can afford to give is advice!”

Work started this term on creating the 200-seat studio from two rooms towards the rear of Main Building. So far, a new roof has been installed and internal work done. The studio will come into use next term, with the tiered seating due to be fitted around the half-term break. The lighting and sound equipment has still to be purchased.

“I did have a good time at QE – but spent my time with music rather than drama,” said Alex. “Hopefully my suggestions help to nudge the new drama studio in the right direction, supporting student drama and creativity, and perhaps producing some directors, actors or designers in the future.”

Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter said: “Alex has been an invaluable source of information for our design of The Robert Dudley Studio. He has visited the site and offered us lots of practical advice, even drawing up detailed sight-line diagrams showing the effect of different seating choices. He was delighted to come back to QE and was thrilled to see how much theatre and performance is taking place.”

QE theatre trips this term included 40 boys in Years 9 and 10 going to see Red Pitch, an award-winning play at Soho House Theatre, which was  built by Alex’s company, Charcoalblue.

Alex provides planning and consultancy on all aspects of theatre design. During more than 15 years of theatre consultancy, he has worked on high-profile projects including: the award-winning Dorfman Theatre at the National Theatre; the new Sadler’s Wells Theatre at London’s Olympic Park; and the first new London West End theatre since 1973, at Soho Place. In addition, he has 25 years’ experience as a lighting designer, production manager and technical stage manager.

• Among other OEs supporting the creation of The Robert Dudley Studio, is Jay Shetty (OE 1999–2006), the podcaster, author and life coach with a huge global online following. Watch Jay’s appeal for The Robert Dudley Studio here.

A new pupil in QE’s first year as a comprehensive, David Burton (OE 1971–1978) returned to Queen’s Road decades later to work as its Head of Finance.

Now retired, he is back with the School once again: this time, to serve as a Governor.

“I have always set great store by education and learning, which meant that I was happy to accept the Governor position as a way of supporting the running of QE, in particular guiding on the finance aspects,” says David. “I look on it as giving something back to the community and the institution of QE.”

He arrived at QE at a time of rapid expansion, with entry doubling from three forms to six. “It still carried elements of a grammar school in many respects, with masters and prefects wearing gowns in assembly, for example. But in my time I witnessed the expansion of pupil numbers up to close to its current size, and the construction of the Fern Building to help accommodate them.”

His personal memories include being in Eric Shearly’s form in his first year, participating in the School play, getting involved in debating, and becoming a prefect. Although excited to be one of the very few who was at the School for the 400th anniversary in 1973 and is still involved now during the 450th anniversary year, he says: “To be honest, I don’t recall very much about the actual commemorations 50 years ago.”

A clearer memory is of being appointed treasurer of the sixth form entertainments committee by Sid Clark, Head of Sixth Form (who later, like David, served as a Governor in retirement): ” I didn’t realise at the time that this would plant a seed for my subsequent career!”

After reading English and History at university, he embarked on a career in accountancy and insurance, training as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young. Based in the City of London, he nonetheless had the opportunity to travel on assignments to North Africa, the USA, France and Switzerland.

“After a long time away from the School (38 years), a coincidence of me being at a loose end and seeing the vacancy for Head of Finance brought me back in 2016. I had little knowledge of modern state school finance, but in my experience, these are often the best situations  I have always appreciated learning and understanding something new. I found the senior team and all the staff to be inspirational, so enjoyed deeply my second stint of six years at QE.

“Coming back did bring back many more memories than I thought I had retained about the school, the masters and my contemporaries.”

He retired in May 2022 and returned to the Governing Body in September this year, having served a term as an elected Staff Governor from 2016 to 2020.

David is married, with two grown-up children and a young grandson “who keeps us busy and entertained”. He enjoys DIY on both houses and cars, as well as travel, cinema, and, more recently, gardening.

Medics and QE contemporaries Kavi Samra and Paul Jung (OE 2008–2015) are working with the School to trial their education app, Medly AI.

The app aims to harness AI to help students from backgrounds like theirs who may not have access to all the educational resources available to others. They only started working on the business in August, yet already it has won funding and been accepted into Microsoft’s start-up programme.

“We’ve always wanted to try to democratise education,” says Kavi. “Medly AI was born from the vision of making quality education accessible and personalised through the power of AI. Both Paul and I noticed throughout our education how people often had advantages from their socio-economic background in terms of educational resources (e.g personal tuition): both of us come from backgrounds that didn’t allow us access to these resources. Recognising the gaps in traditional educational systems due to work pressures on teachers and staffing issues, we saw the potential of AI to fill these gaps and therefore conceptualised a platform that could act as a personal tutor, examiner, and classroom assistant, all integrated into one user-friendly interface.”

After just two months of development, Microsoft admitted Medly AI to its programme, providing Kavi and Paul with mentoring from a business development manager and meeting the costs of the platform up to £150,000. A month later, the project was also accepted into UCL’s Hatchery start-up accelerator, enabling its professional fees for legal, IP and accounting costs to be funded.

Both Paul and Kavi have deep connections with UCL. Paul holds a PhD in Neuropsychiatry from the university and has an extensive background in coding and teaching. He included AI in his research, on which he has published and given international presentations. He has returned to his medical degree at UCL and is in his final year, completing his MBBS in August. Kavi, who currently works as a doctor in anaesthetics, completed his medical degree at UCL in 2021 and is a clinical teacher within its medical school: his approaches to using teaching theory in a digital age earned him an Associate Fellowship of Higher Education Award from UCL and he is also one of the youngest recipients of an honorary fellow contract at UCL.

Paul is responsible for writing code and working on the technical side of the project, while Kavi takes on operations.

After they approached the School about trialling the app with QE students, they recently had a meeting with Headmaster Neil Enright and with Gillian Ridge and Amy Irvine, Heads of Biology and Chemistry respectively. “We demo’d the platform to both Gillian and Amy, introducing our teacher mode,” says Kavi. “This is where teachers are able to set questions (from a large database, or their own custom questions) to their respective classes for homework, or in a test format.”

Medley AI can then:

• Understand the questions
• Work out how they fit into the curriculum of the subject
• Assign them to a specification point
• Mark the students’ answers.

“From here, the teacher can get in-depth statistical insights into each student’s weak topics, topic by topic and class by class. This then enables them to customise their classroom teaching according to class-wide weak topics and, of course, saves an incredible amount of time in terms of marking student work.

“Both Dr Irvine and Dr Ridge seemed quite impressed and were eager to start using Medly as a resource to save time and understand where their students don’t perform well. We have completed the onboarding for the Year 11 group and look forward to working with the Science department in the New Year,” Kavi adds. “This will involve teachers setting homeworks on the platform and providing feedback on what they’d like to see in our teacher mode to help us improve the platform. The students will, of course, have access to our base platform, too, in case they wish to do additional learning or practise questions or exams.”

Mr Enright said: “We are very pleased to be working with Kavi and Paul as they develop this exciting venture that is showing great potential to support our boys, and other young people, with their consolidation and revision.”

Sam Colman (OE 1998-2005) is today a Global Key Account Manager for Boortmalt – the world’s second-largest malting business, supplying brewers and distillers of all sizes.

He combines globe-trotting on business with time spent with his young family in beautiful rural Suffolk. Yet, he says, without QE, “I would not have the skills or education to have the life I currently live. I received the invitation for the 450 Club and wanted to give something back.”

In fact, his early years at the School – from the age of 12 to 15 – were not altogether plain-sailing. “I famously did not attend a single RS class for GCSE (something that slipped through the disciplinary net) and never completed any History homework during Year 9. This meant that I was well versed in the School’s detention policy: however, I was never suspended. When I was 15, I had a conversation with Nick (‘The Sheriff’) Oulton and Tim Bennett who imparted some great advice, advising me that if I concentrated my efforts in actually doing the work rather than finding ways of not getting caught for not doing it, I would have an easier life.”

Current Headmaster Neil Enright joined the School when he was past this difficult time. “He is where I learnt the art of negotiation, convincing him to predict me an A in geography rather than the B he initially suggested – to this day one of my proudest achievements.” Sam went on to read Geography at Manchester.

After taking a year out to teach quad-biking and climbing at PGL, he took up a position with British Sugar in 2012, before joining Boortmalt as Commercial Manager UK (Brewing) in 2017 and rising through the ranks.

He has long been a keen supporter of the School. “I try to attend at least one event each year, ideally a careers event. I like to show the current pupils that there is more to life than corporate finance, medicine, law and engineering. I have a background in sales and now report directly to the board for a global company: it’s hard work and fun.”

Boortmalt has 27 malting locations worldwide, with a total production of 3 million tonnes of malt – a key ingredient in both beer and whisky. “We supply brewers and distillers from the big global [players] to local and craft scales. I am responsible for the global account management for several of the world’s largest brewers, in addition to local responsibility in the UK and North America. Roughly 50% of my time is spent travelling, either meeting with customers, or visiting our production sites, or Antwerp HQ. In the past 18 months I have visited: Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, Vietnam, Canada, USA and Australia for work.

“I really like the variety within my job: I can be negotiating contracts, working on projects (sustainable barley etc.), or working with internal teams on new customer solutions, for example. I was part of a team that completed one of the first bulk shipments of malt from Australia to the Americas during COVID.

“I fit all my work travel around family commitments. My wife and I have two young children, aged 2 and 4.”

Sam lives near Bury St Edmunds (“not far from Eric Houston’s holiday destination”). He still plays football regularly and he is on the community council as a trustee for a centre shared by four villages.

The Forty Society’s autumn lunch saw a record turn-out for recent years. Guest speaker Matthew Rose (OE 2002–2009) said: “It was, I understand, a particularly high turn-out, and, happily, I was there to see it!”

The society, which is open to alumni who left the School at least 40 years ago, has gained an influx of new attendees over the past year to 18 months.

The lunches are held in the clubhouse at Gypsy Corner – the Old Elizabethans Memorial Playing Fields – and, in fact, many members have strong connections to the location, belonging to (or having previously belonged to) the cricket club or rugby club (although the latter has now moved).

Matthew is Head of External Relations, Executive Assistant to the Headmaster, and Clerk to the Governing Body. “It was a good-humoured and lively atmosphere, with old friends enjoying each other’s company very much the point of the gathering,” he said. “I talked about the School’s 450th anniversary year, some of the different projects that had been undertaken and my role within them – hopefully giving a mildly entertaining insight. Alongside this, I encouraged them to remain connected, or re-connect, with the School, and explained that they are always welcome.”

The society is part of the Old Elizabethans Association, though it has its own committee – with much effort put in by Peter ‘Scotty’ Yates (OE 1967–1974) and Mike Harrison (OE 1953-1961), to name a couple. OE President Eric Houston was the MC at the lunch.

“It was good fun to meet OEs new to me and to see friendships flourishing – the Society celebrates the importance of these relationships and the connection many have to the sports clubs within the OE family,” Matthew added. “As I said at the end, I look forward to returning on my qualification for the society in the autumn of 2049!” After the lunch, many repaired to the Black Horse pub, where the photo was taken.

Hugely influential OEs Mustafa Suleyman and Demis Hassabis have both spoken of their grave concerns about the risk to humanity posed by AI.

The pair were among the three co-founders of leading AI company DeepMind, formed in 2010. Mustafa (OE 1995–2002) now leads Inflection AI, a California-based ‘public benefit corporation’ that he founded last year, while Demis (OE 1988–1990), remains chief executive at DeepMind, which was acquired by Google in 2014.

In his new book, The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the 21^st Century’s Greatest Dilemma, Mustafa argues that in the coming decade powerful new technologies will create immense prosperity, but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order.

During an episode of The Rest is Politics: Leading – a podcast hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart – Mustafa spoken about his book, which calls for the “containment” of the new technology with a ten-step plan. He also found time to remember to credit his alma mater: “Attending Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet, changed my life.”

For his part, Demis spoke to the Guardian ahead of a recent summit on AI safety hosted by the UK Government. He said the world must treat the risks from AI as seriously as climate change and take immediate action to combat them. International efforts to oversee the industry could start with a body similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he suggested.

Demis has long been an influential voice on AI. Through a recent New York Times interview, it emerged that he had left Elon Musk “speechless” in 2012 by pointing out a flaw in Musk’s plans to colonise Mars – the risk that if AI were to surpass human intelligence, it could follow humanity to the red planet and pose a threat there as well.

In the same interview, he related how he had impressed veteran Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel with his knowledge of chess to win funding for DeepMind. It was the first time Thiel had ever invested outside the US. “He felt the power of Silicon Valley was sort of mythical, that you couldn’t create a successful big technology company anywhere else,” Demis told the interviewer. “Eventually we convinced him that there were good reasons to be in London.”