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With dark winter journeys having often now become part of their daily routine, QE’s Year 7 learned some vital lessons about road safety through an innovative drama performance.

The specially tailored play and workshop by the visiting theatre company, The Riot Act, were arranged as part of the boys’ Personal Development Time programme.

Head of Year 7 David Ryan said: “For many of the boys, this year is the first time they have travelled to and from school independently. It is important that they are aware of the dangers of traffic and know how to keep themselves safe.”

The Riot Act was established six years ago by Dan Hobson, a professional scriptwriter and lecturer, and Ellen Casey, who is a teacher. The company deliver tailored dramas and workshops to fit in with curriculum requirements, whilst aiming to engage and entertain their audiences.

“The boys enjoyed the humorous play, which nevertheless contained serious messages,” said Mr Ryan.

After the drama they had an opportunity to reflect on what they had seen in the interactive workshop.

“These messages cannot be repeated often enough to boys of this age,” added Mr Ryan. “Particularly in the winter months when it is so much darker, they need to be vigilant to keep themselves safe on their journeys.”

Boys were shocked to discover how much money is deducted at source when they learned how to decipher a payslip in a financial capability workshop, reported Head of Pupil Development Sarah Westcott.

The Year 8 boys also learned about the types of bank account they could access both now and in the future, as well as finding out about the importance of budgeting.

The exercise which saw them analysing a payslip to work out how much salary is deducted and for what purpose was particularly enjoyable, notwithstanding the shock it brought, Dr Westcott said. “Many of them expressed surprise at how much is taken before you even get paid!”

Further tasks then required the boys to think about different kinds of debt – what is a ’good’ debt, such as a mortgage, and what is a ‘bad’ debt, such as a store card or payday loan.

The event was organised with leading international and UK bank HSBC. It took place during one of the boys’ Personal Development Time (PDT) sessions. PDT lies at the heart of QE’s comprehensive pastoral support system and is focused on making pupils ‘confident and responsible’, in line with the School’s mission. All boys receive 90 minutes of PDT each week.

Besides learning about personal finance, there was another purpose in holding the workshop, Dr Westcott explained: “The event was part of a wider strategy at School to encourage more employers to come in to talk to students to provide a balanced careers perspective.”

Boys in Year 9 explored what makes relationships healthy and unhealthy in an hour-long assembly devoted to the topic of domestic abuse and sexual violence.

Led by representatives from Tender, a charity ‘acting to end abuse’, the boys learned about the huge scale of the domestic violence problem – one in three women and one in five men will be impacted by it. Tender’s Emily Whyte and Andrew Macklin highlighted some stark facts: on average, two women are killed each week in the UK by a current or former partner, and for men, the figure is about two per month. Overall, about 85% of victims of domestic violence are women.

The boys were also told that it is very much a young people’s issue – statistics show that those aged 16-24 are the demographic mostly likely to suffer domestic violence. The highly interactive assembly included a discussion about ‘sexting’ that followed the screening of a film featuring a case study, entitled #ListenToYourSelfie. The discussion covered appropriate and inappropriate communication through technology and in online relationships. It focused on matters of trust, coercion and manipulation, as well as how to stay safe, the dangers of sending explicit images and an understanding of the law in this area.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “As a School, we are committed to exploring these serious issues and to building awareness and understanding among our pupils, not least because of the prevalence of domestic violence among young people across the country, as the statistics reveal.

“There will be follow-up to these discussions in form groups as part of our Personal Development Time programme; in fact, we are increasingly using such special assemblies to support the programme and to give boys an additional insight and point them towards external sources of advice and support.”

There was discussion of the different forms that domestic violence can take, with the definition having been expanded in recent years beyond purely physical abuse to include areas such as controlling behaviour and emotional abuse. Boys were told that physical violence is usually preceded by at least two or three other expressions of domestic abuse.

The assembly included a quiz on healthy relationships and an activity in which boys were asked to arrange a list of behaviours along a line from ‘most healthy’ to ‘most unhealthy’. This stimulated discussion of various forms of behaviour which was geared towards helping boys identify what positive, respectful relationships based on equal power look like and, conversely, helping them to identify unhealthy relationships.

This debate concluded that, of the terms provided, ‘respect’ was the most important ‘healthy’ factor, followed by ‘trust’ and ‘listening’. There was mature debate around matters such as jealousy, control, secrets and cheating, with the discussion considering the moral, ethical and legal aspects of such behaviours.

The representatives from Tender finished by encouraging boys to think about who in their lives they could turn to for help and support if they had a concern or wanted a second opinion on a relationship. They also ‘signposted’ the boys to publicly available support services and – should they be needed – ways of reporting issues in this area.

Bilal Harry Khan is fast becoming a leading voice on issues of social justice, race and masculinity.

In recent months, Bilal has featured in a number of BBC news and current affairs programmes and has launched a successful podcast with fellow Cambridge graduates, all ‘black and mixed-race guys’, looking at life, diversity and the challenges faced after graduation.

One episode of the podcast this month featured an interview with Stormzy, following the artist’s decision to sponsor scholarships at the university for black students.

Bilal (OE 2003–2010), who works as a facilitator running diversity and inclusion training workshops with corporate clients, is due to visit the School this term to deliver a talk to Year 11 on Masculinity in Britain. He turned freelance in August: “I will be looking to develop my portfolio of work as a facilitator in the coming years.”

Earlier in the year, Bilal was a panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, also speaking about masculinity.

And this month, he was interviewed by the BBC’s Global Gender & Identity Correspondent, Megha Mohan. In the article, he related the challenges of living in the UK with a name that is unfamiliar to many – including one occasion when he visited a school (not QE) and a teacher introduced him in assembly as ‘Harry’ even though he had been repeatedly emailing the teacher and signing himself off as ‘Bilal’. The teacher later told him that ‘Bilal’ would have been “difficult” for the children, although in fact many of them had come up to him after his talk and said his name perfectly.

In his parting shot in the article, Bilal made a plea: “Children in the UK should be able to grow up loving and being proud of their names. You can play a part in that by learning to pronounce them properly. It is not that hard. If you can say ‘Tchaikovsky’, you can pronounce our names.”

He was interviewed on the BBC World Service about his mixed-race heritage in the run-up to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The royal bride had spoken of her confusion as a child when asked to describe her race and of the enduring impact of her mixed-race background during her acting career.

Bilal told presenter Nora Kim of his own experiences as a person from a mixed-race background. His father is Kenyan of South Asian heritage and his mother is Jamaican from a mixed-race (East Asian and black Caribbean) heritage.

He recalled a time when he was out with some of his QE schoolmates: “Most of my friends were Asian. Someone’s girlfriend said ‘Oh, you are the black friend.’” This conversation caused him to reflect at the time that “my identity is based on how other people perceive me”.

When used in the UK, the term ‘mixed-race’ is generally presumed to mean a combination of white and ‘something else’, he said, yet that did not describe him or many other people. “Perhaps we need to change the definition to include people like myself, like my mum,” he said.

After leaving QE, Bilal read Theology at Cambridge. While there, he met the three friends with whom he launched the Over the Bridge podcast in March this year.

Since graduating, he has worked as a youth engagement officer in Barnet and then, for more than four years, for WE, a Toronto-based non-profit organisation working globally with young people and families.

Old Elizabethan Kam Taj returned to the School to lead a workshop on Oxbridge preparation for 32 sixth-formers.

Kam, a performance coach and motivational speaker, who himself studied at Churchill College, Cambridge, covered topics ranging from university interviews to procrastination in the all-day session.

The course was part of the extensive programme QE provides to support senior boys as they make university applications and consider career choices that best match their talents and aptitudes. Applications to Oxford and Cambridge must be made by 15 October for places starting the following autumn. QE boys secured 144 places at the two universities in the five years from 2013 to 2017.

Afterwards, Kam (Kamran Tajbaksh, OE 2004–2011) praised his Year 12 audience who had “stayed engaged and receptive for the duration of the course”, even though, as he pointed out, they had just completed their examinations and were looking forward to the start of the summer holidays in just a few days’ time.

While at QE, Kam achieved 13 A* grades at GCSE and four A*s with one A at A-level. On graduating with a first in Manufacturing Engineering, Kam initially took up a post as a management consultant with a global company. However, he had begun doing performance coaching work while still at university: “It was far more fulfilling than academics (even more so than my sports!) – and my clients were achieving great results.”

So, in 2016, he “left the strategy consulting world and began living my dream for myself”.
He recently published his first book 8 Principles of Exam Domination, which aims to help pupils achieve their desired grades with minimal stress.

His talk covered topics entitled:

• Acing uni interviews
• Overcoming procrastination
• Planning & prioritisation
• Mindset management

Kam also introduced a new topic, with the QE boys the first to hear about his Motivational Fire Formula.

Afterwards, Kam thanked the School from his Instagram account and wished all the boys a “great summer” and hoped they would “come back refreshed and ready to smash Year 13!”

A series of special events have been helping boys due to join Year 7 in September start to get to know each other and learn their way around the campus.

The half-day induction sessions for the boys and their parents offered opportunities for the soon-to-be Elizabethans to meet those who will be in their form groups, as well as their form tutors and their Head of Year.

Headmaster Neil Enright explained to them what ‘the QE experience’ entails, while current boys, including School Captain Aashish Khimasia, of Year 12, and three boys at the end of their first year, added their perspectives.

“These events are about welcoming the boys and their families and helping support the transition to secondary school, ensuring that there are some familiar faces come September,” explained Mr Enright afterwards. “The induction sessions also make clear that it is, in fact, the whole family that is joining the Elizabethan community and that parents (through our home-school partnership) will play a very significant role in the success of their sons.”

After hearing from the Headmaster and these current pupils, the boys headed off into their new form groups for activities designed both to enable them to become acquainted with each other and to learn more about the School itself.

The activities included a tour of the School, led by prefects, with an accompanying quiz for the boys to complete on their way round. “One of the big challenges of going to secondary school can be the sheer scale of the site, so anything to help new boys get their bearings is useful,” said Mr Enright.

Parents were given further briefings by QE’s leadership, including an introduction to the School’s support systems and the role of the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s. They then had the opportunity to talk to the Headmaster over coffee.