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Sixty-five senior QE boys have enrolled on a coaching programme run by alumnus Kam Taj.

Kam (Kamran Tajbaksh, OE 2004–2011), a performance coach, inspirational speaker and author, will help the pupils through an online course supported by more than 100 videos and activities.

After taking a first in the Manufacturing Engineering tripos at Churchill College, Cambridge, Kam secured a job as a management consultant with a global firm. However, he had begun doing performance coaching work while still at university, and in 2016 left the consultancy world to concentrate fully on coaching and motivational speaking.

Thanking Headmaster Neil Enright and Assistant Head Michael Feven (Pupil Development) for their support, Kam said: “QE is consistently named as one of the best schools in the UK, and I’m confident that this course will be an asset to the students’ academic and personal development, especially during these uncertain times.”

Kam is, in fact, a regular visitor to QE. In recent years, he has led a motivational skills workshop for Year 12 boys and helps pupils with their Oxbridge preparations.

Mr Enright said: “I am pleased that so many of our boys are taking advantage of Kam’s expertise by signing up for his Exam Success Academy online programme. Kam is both an Elizabethan and a very gifted performance coach, and although there are, of course, no public examinations this year, I am sure that the principles the boys will learn on the course will stand them in good stead for the future.”

The programme focuses on eight principles: time management; mindset management; study tools & techniques; on-the-day performance; academic & personal support groups; sleep optimisation; physical activity & movement, and nutrition & hydration.

Kam had been due to visit the School last month to talk to Year 12 on Student Life at Oxbridge (discussing topics ranging from choosing a college, the academic intensity of Oxbridge, student life beyond academic matters, and common traps that students fall into in their first year), but the visit had to be shelved because of the Covid-19 restrictions.

It would have followed three workshops held earlier in the Spring Term and run by Mr Feven, as well as Head of Year 12 Helen Davies and Head of English Robert Hyland (both Oxford graduates), that were focused on providing Year 12 boys with advice on applying to Oxbridge. The workshops take place each year, although Kam’s talk was to have been a new addition to this programme.

The guest speaker at the Year 12 Luncheon was Sonita Alleyne OBE, who in October 2019 became the first black Master of an Oxbridge College.

On taking up the role at Jesus College, Cambridge, she also became the first woman to lead the college in its 524-year history. QE is the first school she has visited since becoming Master.

After the luncheon she met with Year 13’s Bhiramah Rammanohar, Reza Sair and Drew Sellis, who all hold offers for Jesus College. The trio are among 40 QE Oxbridge offers this year – a School record.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This luncheon is the first event for Year 12 at which they can gain experience of the type of formal social occasions that they will encounter at university and in their professional lives. Sonita gave a terrific and inspiring address that was perfectly adapted to the occasion. Boys will certainly have gone away with a greater awareness of what life at Cambridge is like and of the exciting intellectual and personal development opportunities available.

“During her speech, she spoke of how the very experience of applying for, and then studying at, a university such as Cambridge, brings together people of different backgrounds, giving them that experience in common.

“This will have resonated with many of the sixth-formers present, since QE provides a state school pathway for boys from very different backgrounds (many of them the first in their family to enter higher education at all) with the opportunity to go to some of the world’s leading universities.”

The luncheon featured the customary toasts, led by School Captain Ivin Jose, who fulfilled an MC role. Grace was said by Guy Flint, Senior Vice-Captain, and the vote of thanks given by his fellow Senior Vice-Captain, George Raynor.

Sonita Alleyne was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, and brought up in Leytonstone, East London. She attended a comprehensive school before going to Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge, where she read Philosophy. A career in radio followed, and she founded production company Somethin’ Else, which she led as Chief Executive from 1991 until 2009. She is a Fellow both of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts and of the Radio Academy (FRA).

She began her speech to the sixth-formers with a word on examinations: “Exams can’t tell the world how funny you are, or how kind, or how much you love manga or wine…” But what they are, she said, is a metric that the world uses to judge success, and so for that reason they do have some importance.

One of her key pieces of advice was about keeping options open: “In life, you need to keep doors open for yourself,” she advised. The difficulty was in knowing which doors they should be. Other people would not always open doors for them, so the boys needed to be active in this regard.

For her, one such door had been Cambridge itself. In her letter to Jesus College in relation to becoming Master, she wrote: “I left Cambridge over 30 years ago, but it never left me.”

As an undergraduate, she had a real interest in artificial intelligence, so, she told the boys, she had planned to read Computer Science after an initial year of Philosophy (joint courses being more common at that time), but ended up studying Philosophy alone throughout.

She recalled that to help sixth-formers prepare for the university application process, her secondary school had just made them talk – about ideas, news, science, indeed about anything. She found she relished this and thus greatly enjoyed the Cambridge interview process and the intellectual stimulation it brought. Not only did she find the discussions “challenging in a way that GCSEs weren’t”, but they helped provide her with a sense of belonging.

Once at Cambridge, she threw herself into many enriching activities which she had not had the time or opportunity to follow at school, including Music, singing, theatre and student politics. She was even secretary of the college Mystical Science Club. (“There were only two of us!”)

She noted, however, that it was the informal shared conversations around college – and outside of these activities – that most helped her develop deep friendships and formulate her views: “[That was] where I discovered my sense of agency.” She graduated as a “free-thinking” person – a recurring phrase during her address.

After university, she had a series of jobs (“a zig-zag career”). “Don’t stress about finding a career for life, or knowing what you want to do when you graduate…take things one step at a time,” she counselled, adding that she is still taking her career one step a time.

Setting up Somethin’ Else at the age of 24 was, though, a watershed moment for her, she said. Today, she enjoys running her business, her media work, and her regeneration work as part of the London Olympic Development Corporation.

She also now takes great satisfaction from supporting other people in getting through challenges or making progress in their lives: “I am always proud to say that I help people.”

Her final advice to the boys was to be free-thinking, to challenge themselves, to “push open a few doors and to follow your ideas, because they matter”.

In a question-and-answer session following her talk, she was asked about her views on lowering grade offers for students from the state sector or disadvantaged backgrounds. “Cambridge should be a bastion of excellence, not of élitism,” she replied, but said she feels that the systematic dropping of grades does not work.

Her preference was to encourage more people to apply (“It’s one of five options and costs no more than any other university – what have you got to lose?”) and to improve access that way. Bright students such as those from QE neither want nor need entrance requirements to be lowered. “If you get the grades, you belong,” she said, adding that it is important to debunk a sense that people from certain backgrounds might not fit in. “My job as Master is about community – and it’s the best job in the world.”

Award-winning speaker Robyn Steward told Year 10 and 11 boys of how she emerged from years of bullying to become a successful speaker, author, academic researcher and musician.

Delivering the Spring Middle School Lecture, Robyn, an Ambassador for the National Autistic Society, gave the boys insights into the particular problems faced by autistic people, but also suggested some ways in which everyone could benefit from what she has learned.

Pointing out that life does not always unfold in a straight line, she said it was important to make the most of the present: “Life is messy. All I’ve got is today – and when I realise that, it makes me a happier person,” she said.

“Find your tribe” – those people one belongs with – she urged the boys, adding: “Don’t worry if you haven’t found your thing yet; keep looking.” She, for example, had had no idea when she started out on her career that she would end up as a professional musician, yet she now plays the trumpet and has put on “inclusive-conscious” gigs entitled Robyn’s Rocket in London.

Head of Academic Enrichment Nisha Mayer said: “I would like to thank Robyn for giving a lecture that contrived to be both inspiring and humorous, while at the same helping to deepen the boys’ understanding of autism.”

In her talk entitled Autism from a person, not a textbook, Robyn told her audience in the Shearly Hall that she wished she had had the opportunity to hear an autistic speaker when she was at school, as she was just made to feel different and “weird”.

She had been widely bullied and called names such as “retard” or “spastic”. This was the result of ignorance and of her classmates being “jokey”. In her view, there were two types of bullying, she explained – the “jokers” trying to raise a laugh from their friends at the expense of someone else, and those who are “mean at heart’. The majority are the former, who, she believed, would be shocked to realise she was talking all these years later about the harmful effects of what they had said.

She was in a special needs class at primary school, but the bullying really started in high school, she said. Recalling the great insecurity she felt about visiting the toilets, she explained that she had been told the other pupils would “flush her head down the loo” and, as an autistic person, she had taken this very literally. Robyn has cerebral palsy, so she was also worried about not being able to operate the locks properly. She was, in fact, locked in the toilet, manhandled and called names. Fortunately, her mother supported her in this ordeal, she said.

Speaking about the effects of bullying generally, she said: “I don’t think anyone should have to feel like that. It is crushing for your self-confidence.”

In 2015, Robyn was joint awardee of the National Autistic Society’s Professional award for outstanding achievement by an individual on the Autism Spectrum for her work in raising awareness of the abuse experienced by autistic people. In 2018, she was listed on the Power 100 list of the most influential disabled people in the UK.

We can all do something to combat bullying, she told the QE boys. If they saw a friend saying unkind things, they could say: “Hey, stop it! That person has feelings,” and could also tell the target of the bullying not to worry about it. And since the boys comprise a community at QE, they should work together and support each other, recognising that everyone experiences low self-esteem at times.

At college, she had more freedom to protect herself – she could leave a room when she chose, for example. She studied IT – and “really enjoyed it”, despite further bullying – and then art & design. She learned at college about the concept of Theory of Mind, which was a huge insight: she realised that being autistic, she had struggled to understand someone else’s perception of a situation in the way that others do through empathy or reading facial expression or observing body language. All of this she had to learn from scratch.

Showing the boys her school photo, she asked them what was different about her (and stated that their age group is normally better at spotting the answer than adults!). Unlike her peers, she was not looking at the camera and was not smiling, she pointed out, adding that this is because many autistic people do not pick up on social cues.

In spite of all the bullying, she now has a full and varied life, Robyn said. “I have no GCSEs and yet here I am, aged 33, saying I’ve turned out all right.” She has a BBC podcast with fellow autistic presenter Jamie Knight – 1800 seconds on autism – and is also host of the Autism Matters podcast from Autism: The International Journal of Research and Practice. She works with UCL and the Wellcome Trust, conducting research to understand how we are all different. For more than 15 years, she has been travelling the world giving talks. She is the author of books providing guidance for autistic people.

Afterwards, Year 13 pupil Saifullah Shah complimented Robyn on her talk and then opened the floor up for questions.

Society and the mass media are the source of stereotypes that lead to prejudice and discrimination, an LGBT activist told QE’s senior pupils.

Jessica Amery, from Haringey-based charity Wise Thoughts presented an assembly on LGBT issues to Years 11-13 in the Shearly Hall.

She told the boys that although she had a transgender parent, she nevertheless faced homophobia when coming out as a lesbian.

And she pointed out the ways in which LGBT people’s mental health is at risk. According to research, she stated, schoolchildren hear ‘that’s so gay’ every 14 minutes: “Every time it’s said, it’s like a little stab to the LGBT community.”

Wise Thoughts’ website says that it “creates dynamic local, national and international arts initiatives and delivers services that help address social justice issues for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex (LGBTQI+) and black, Asian & minority-ethnic (BAME) communities”. The charity runs the GFEST (Gaywise FESTival), which starts next month on the theme of #QueerQueeries.

Jessica began her talk by asking the boys to take 10 seconds to think about how comfortable it is to talk about LGBT. Then she asked them to take another 10 seconds to discuss stereotypes, explaining that stereotypes are defined by ‘putting someone in a box’ – for example, ‘you are gay if…’

Such phrases create fear, making people feel it is unacceptable to hold hands or touch those who are gay, she stated, adding that stereotypes result in segregation. Stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination are thus all part of the same picture, she said.

Some 50% of LGBT people experience bullying, which Jessica defined as including texts, social media messages, people ignoring you or making comments. LGBT students have the highest rate of truancy and homelessness, and their education also suffers disproportionately, she said.

Headmaster, Neil Enright said: “This was an important assembly on tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic language. There will be some pupils for whom this is deeply personal, whilst for others it is about understanding the lives of those with different experiences to them and being tolerant, supportive members of the School community and wider society.”

A campaigner addressed sixth-formers about his own mental health journey and told how it inspired him to start a socially conscious fashion business.

George Hodgson, founder of the successful Maison de Choup* brand, visited the School just a few days before World Mental Health Day.

“I’m using fashion as a vehicle to raise awareness of mental health,” he told the Year 12 and 13 boys, adding that his was “a positive message, but a sensitive one”.

In the talk, he recounted the many ups and downs he experienced over a three-year period. “I kept asking myself when I would be better. The biggest word is time.”

He started his talk with a breathing exercise, talking to the boys about mindfulness, paying attention to one’s breath and letting one’s thoughts pass. He asked them to join in by trying the exercise themselves for a few minutes.

George, who comes from near Winchester in Hampshire, explained that he had been hyperactive from a young age. His mental health problems began when, at a festival in 2012, he experimented with drugs – ecstasy and MDMA – aged 16. He did not enjoy the experience and started to feel paranoid afterwards, so quickly decided it wasn’t for him.

A week later whilst clearing out the horses at his parents’ house, he had his first attack: he felt hot, could not breathe and started to panic. These attacks continued every day for a week. He was diagnosed with panic disorder and anxiety, and was referred to CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) for counselling.

George then developed OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and began washing his hands 50 – 100 times daily. He experienced suicidal thoughts that increased over a two-week period.

He saw a reassuring therapist who listened to his story. He was told there was a 40-week waiting list to start treatment and was lucky enough to be treated privately as his parents were able to support him. This treatment included hypnotherapy to put him through the sensations of panic in a safe environment. George was prescribed beta blockers and SSRIs (a class of drugs typically used as anti-depressants).

When he was feeling better, George and his friends travelled to Thorpe Park, where they all decided to go on the Stealth roller-coaster. He realised that the medication he was on had made him numb – he felt nothing, no adrenaline or excitement from any of the rides.

George’s story continued with a referral for cognitive behavioural therapy to learn coping mechanisms. He learnt to challenge his anxiety by breaking down thoughts and trying to rationalise them.

Not long after this, George was at his grandmother’s house where he kept imagining there was cocaine on the table. One-and-a-half years into treatment, he opened up to family and found that talking helped.

In all, it took him three years to get better. During his recovery, he used diaries and drawings to express himself. While unable to go to college or work, George went to his father’s office and started experimenting with designs.

Eventually, he decided to start his own t-shirt business, with the help of a friend. In 2017 he launched his Warrior collection, which includes clothing with words such as ‘don’t feed the fears’, ‘sometimes I’m okay, sometimes I’m not’ and ‘warrior, not worrier’.

His aim, he explained, was not to label people with ‘I have anxiety’, but to encourage them to open up about their stories if asked about the t-shirts, thereby starting a conversation about mental health.

His collection made it to London Fashion Week, with celebrities and TV reality-show stars wearing it.

He started selling his story to newspapers and magazines to raise awareness, and the brand’s success grew very rapidly as it featured in publications including Vanity Fair, The Observer and the Evening Standard’s Style magazine, and was a winner in the British Fashion Startup Awards.

Twenty-five per cent of the proceeds of certain of his designs go to YoungMinds, the UK’s leading charity committed to improving the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children and young people.

After his success with Maison de Choup, George went back to a festival – “the biggest place for drugs” – and found that he had no problem in being there. Indeed, he is now able to speak to a roomful of people, he pointed out to the boys.

Among his messages to the audience were: “It’s ok not to be ok” and “If you’re suffering or a friend is suffering, you are not alone.”

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “George spoke very frankly about his personal experience and in doing so exemplified the way in which talking about mental health can prove an important step in helping deal with the issues that you may be encountering. Through such assemblies we want to raise awareness among our boys of the sorts of challenges that people can go through with their mental health and to underline that there is an understanding and supportive community around them should they find themselves in a similar situation, now or in the future.”

* ‘Choup’ was George’s childhood nickname for his sister, Charlotte, who supported him throughout his mental health problems.

With more than 100 prizes presented, the Junior Awards Ceremony in the final week of the academic year gave public recognition to the high achievement and outstanding commitment of QE’s youngest pupils.

The formal ceremony in the School Hall took its traditional form, with the audience of prize-winners, their parents, VIP guests and staff treated to classical music interludes during the prize-giving.

Yet in his speech, Headmaster Neil Enright reminded the young high-fliers that theirs is a changing world: “If rapid progress is a feature of our School, it most certainly is in aspects of the wider world. Whilst much focus this month is on the 50th anniversary of the moon landings, it is also the 100th anniversary of the first two-way crossing of the Atlantic by airship. That only fifty years should separate those landmark events, itself would seem to emphasise the point. The rate of technological and human progress has never been so great.”

This, said Mr Enright, provided the boys both with wonderful opportunities and new challenges. “Try new things and broaden your base of skills and knowledge, as your generation will need to adapt in an economy and a society disrupted by technology and associated structural change.”

Technological change was also making the globe “smaller, more connected and more accessible,” he added. “In the last year boys here have been variously to Canada (for rugby and skiing), Beijing (for astrophysics), Russia (for History and Politics), France and Germany (on language exchange programmes), Sicily (for Geography), Kentucky (for robotics) and New York (for an international mock trial competition), among other destinations.

“But” the Headmaster said, “we may have reached a moment when progress is not all about faster, further and bigger – at least in the non-digital world. Climate change, for example, means grappling with new imperatives, of doing things smarter, cleaner and more sustainably.”

The implications of this for QE’s pupils were clear: “It is through a rounded combination of academic, technical, creative and social skills that progress on the biggest issues facing us in the future will rely. This is a roundedness we try to prepare you for…You are in a privileged position to be well set to face that future with confidence and optimism, building on your prior success to progress further and further, to thrive in a changing world, and to change it.”

Among the VIP guests at the afternoon ceremony were Councillor Lachhya Gurung, Deputy Mayor of the Borough of Barnet, as well as governors and representatives of the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s. In his welcome to the Deputy Mayor, the Headmaster pointed to his 18 years of service with the Brigade of Gurkhas and his longstanding chairmanship of the Burnt Oak Nepalese Community.

The Headmaster also welcomed the Guest of Honour, Old Elizabethan Akash Gandhi (2005–2012), who, he told the audience, had himself picked up no fewer than five Junior Awards when he was in Year 7, for Geography, Mathematics, Science, Stapylton House and the overall Charles Fitch Memorial Award for Outstanding Commitment.

In his speech, Akash, who is currently working as a Junior Doctor, urged current boys not to forget the values and ethos of QE.

Akash threw himself into life as a pupil, playing cricket (he was described by the Headmaster as an “excellent all-rounder”), getting involved in debating, helping younger boys through peer mentoring, supporting the Sai School Appeal and serving as a Senior Lieutenant, then one of the leading positions within the prefect team.

On leaving, he went up to Queens’ College, Cambridge, to read Medicine, taking a first-class degree with prize & honours. From there, he went to University College London, for his clinical training, again excelling in his studies. Akash is now a Junior Doctor in Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow, but carves out time every year to support QE’s aspiring Sixth Form medics with their UCAT (University Clinical Aptitude Test) preparations.

Akash recalled the message instilled in him by his father: “It is not about what you do, but who you become by what you do.” It is, he said, more important to be concerned about what will be said in your eulogy than what is written in your CV.

And Akash had three specific areas of advice. The first was to find and follow your passions. “During my time at QE, my passions were my culture, cricket, charity work and football. And so, at university I found myself as the Vice-President of Cambridge University’s India Society. I also captained my college’s cricket team all the way to the final of the cup tournament – despite only ever representing QE’s C team.”

The second area was to find your mentors and to remember to thank them. “You are not alone, and you’d be a fool not to seek advice from those around you, especially in an establishment like this one.

“Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, embrace the power of true friendships – trust me on this one,” Akash told the boys. “From my experience, boys of this School look out for each other long after they have stopped sporting its badge. Joining Stapylton House with Mr [Mark] Peplow at the helm, little did I realise the everlasting friendships that I would go on to make. With some of them, I have travelled across central America, Asia and Australia. With others, I have worked together to help provide treatment for patients attending emergency departments across London.

“I can safely say that I am still surrounded by the values, ethos and ethic that I felt whilst studying at QE. I suppose that’s easy to say when I got to work last Friday to find that four out of the five doctors on my team were also QE boys. And as for the fifth? She’s a proud mother of a son who currently goes to QE!

“Congratulations on your achievements, keep working hard, and the best of luck for the future,” Akash concluded.

During the afternoon, the School’s young musicians performed works by Handel, Bach, Chopin and the Bohemia-born Josef Fiala, who died in 1816. A Recessional piece was composed by Year 12’s Ifeatu Obiora and Federico Rocco.

The vote of thanks was delivered by Saim Khan, winner of the Year 7 award for public speaking.

The awards presented covered a full range of academic subjects and extra-curricular activities, with some also recognising service to the School.

After the ceremony, boys and their parents enjoyed refreshments with staff and other guests.