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A team of four QE boys has been placed second in the country in the Top of the Bench Chemistry competition – the best-ever result by a QE team.

Sanchit Agrawal, of Year 11, James Tang, of Year 10, and Year 9’s Bashmy Basheer and Nico Puthu were narrowly beaten by King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys, Birmingham, in the final of the prestigious competition organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry, which took place at Loughborough University. They received £15 Amazon vouchers and certificates and the School received a silver plate.

“This is a great performance at a very high level of competition,” said Second Master Colin Price, who paid tribute to Science teacher Dr Elizabeth Kuo for her role in supporting the team’s participation. “It’s very gratifying to see the preparation work paying off so clearly; it was an excellent opportunity for these boys.”

The team overcame 19 schools in the regional round, winning through with a score of 90% and tackling both individual and team questions. In the final, a series of short, factual tests and practical, problem-solving team exercises provided a rigorous examination of the boys’ chemical knowledge.

Entrepreneur Kumar Hindocha (1999-2006) is hoping to secure the backing of Sir Richard Branson for an innovative parcel delivery business that makes use of existing train and coach services – including Branson’s Virgin Trains.

First, however, he needed the specific support of Old Elizabethans for one day only (voting was on 19th May 2015).

Kumar already runs Islington-based PitchWise – a live booking website for private and public football pitches across London. Now he is hoping to launch the new delivery business, YouniMover, as part of Sir Richard’s nationwide Pitch to Rich competition.

“I have been accepted on to the next stage, which is about getting as many votes for our online 'pitch' as possible,” he says. He is therefore appealing for Old Elizabethans and others connected with QE to give their support online.

Kumar left QE in 2006 to take a degree in Management at Warwick University. “After graduating, I moved to south London and worked for Sky Television, learning the advertising ropes. I then moved into finance and then shortly after worked as a Student Career Advisor at King’s College London, before finally taking the leap into starting PitchWise.

“I saw a gap in the systems that schools, local government and sports centres were using in order to promote their sporting resources to local public, so I developed software in order that customers could find and book their local resources in one place and in real time,” Kumar explained.

He applied a similar philosophy when devising YouniMover. “I have a passion for disrupting industries with ingrained customer service problems and operational inefficiencies – and this time my focus is firmly on the parcel delivery industry. I mean to create a platform that makes it cheaper and easier for people to transport their items around the country leveraging existing transport services. You can see why we need Virgin! The prize on offer is also an unmissable chance for me as a budding entrepreneur to learn from Sir Richard.”

Kumar entered the competition in the New Things category, which is for “ideas that might disrupt a market and shake things up”.  Out of a reported 6,000 entries, YouniMover was one of 2,000 entries to be given a pitch page on the competition website. “We were actually outside the top 150, but the Virgin team were impressed with the high standard of submission, and are holding one more day of votes, 19th May,  to narrow the selection. So with the School’s help I hope to make it!”

To read more about YouniMover, click here.

Year 8 boys got an insight into just what a lack of access to clean water can mean from two visiting speakers from international charity WaterAid.

Miriam Poulton has worked on community-based projects in several African countries, while May Sule is an expert in sustainable water management in Nigeria. They explained to 90 Year 8 boys how organisations like WaterAid are working with local communities in Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs) to improve access to clean water and sanitation.

“The boys were deeply interested and absorbed a great deal of factual information about the challenges involved with providing clean water in LEDCs,” said Sarah Jones, the Geography teacher who organised the event. “The top three facts that the boys said they had learnt were: that pneumonia is the biggest killer of children; one-third of people in the world do not have access to a toilet, and the thinner you are the higher is your body’s water content.”

After the presentation the boys took part in a workshop. They were given an imaginary budget of £5,000 to spend on a village of 300 people in Ghana who do not have access to clean water or sanitation.

The exercise required them to decide whether to spend the money immediately on installing pumps, wells and latrines, or whether to hold a consultation with the villagers – at a cost of £1,000 – to ask them what they thought would be best for the village.

QE student investors narrowly missed out on a place in the national final of a hugely popular competition after coming fifth among the top 80 teams across the country.

Team Batrachomyomachy (the word comes from Ancient Greek and means a petty quarrel) first shone in the initial round of the ifs Student Investor Challenge. This involved investment of a fictional £100,000 over a three-and-a-half month period up to the end of January.  The team increased the value of their portfolio to £178,236; they ranked eighth nationally at this point out of 8,720 teams, and fifth out of 3,225 teams in the South East, the most competitive region. 

Even within QE, there was significant competition, with some 56 teams, involving 224 boys from Years 10-13, registering to take part. The top 20 teams in each region progress to the semi-finals stage, but there is a maximum of one team per school.

Team Batrachomyomachy therefore duly took their place at the semi-finals. There the contest involved teams predicting the closing value of four different stocks per week for four weeks. The earlier in the week the prediction was made and the closer to the closing price, the higher the points gained.

A strong performance saw the QE boys gain fifth place out of all 80 teams in this stage of the competition, but they were third in the South East region. Since only the top two teams in each region were eligible to progress, the QE team failed to reach the national finals by the narrowest of margins, with its score of 2331.91 being fewer than three points behind the South East’s Glenthorne High School, which was immediately above it in the league tables.

“The team performed extremely well in what was a very closely fought contest,” said QE’s Head of Economics, Liane Ryan.

Team Batrachomyomachy comprised four Year 12 students: Yash Patel, Kamil Zajac, David Hao and Charran Santhalingam.
 

A Year 8 pupil is celebrating after reaching the semi-finals of a national table tennis competition.

Zaiim Premji took part in the English Schools Table Tennis Association (ESTTA) event in the U13 category, representing London North schools. He lost to the eventual winner, Ethan Walsh, by 3 games to 1 in the semi-final.

Ethan Walsh then went on to win the boys’ title in straight sets. After picking up his prize, Ethan paid tribute to Zaiim’s performance in their match: “In the semi-final, I had Zaiim Premji and he took a set off me and played really well. But that helped me be warmed up and ready for the final.”

Zaiim has been playing table tennis since he was eight years old. In his first year of playing, he qualified for the U11 Individual Nationals, aged nine. Since then he has qualified every year for the ESTTA and English Table Tennis Association individual national finals. He was spotted as a potential England player and was asked to be part of the London Regional Squad to have additional specialist coaching, also attending a camp at Lilleshall, the national sports centre in Shropshire.

Since starting at QE, Zaiim has been training locally with Urban Progress Table Tennis Club and also helps with coaching table tennis at School during PE lessons.

Year 13 biologists gained some invaluable hands-on experience of genetically modifying bacteria under the guidance of a visiting guest lecturer from Kings College London.

Dr Elizabeth Glennon, from the KCL Department of Neuroscience, spent the day at QE. Sixth-Formers used their lesson times in the morning and early afternoon to carry out a number of different tasks, before Dr Glennon pulled together some overall conclusions at the end of the day.

The boys used a technique known as ‘Mutagenesis PCR’ to transform bacteria. They learned how to mutate circular pieces of DNA, known as plasmids, before heat-shocking live bacteria into accepting the modified genetic material into their cells. They then used ‘aseptic technique’ (a procedure used by medical staff to prevent the spread of infection) to spread colonies on to plates containing an antibiotic. The boys therefore knew that if any bacteria had grown, those plates had to contain the mutated plasmids which confer antibiotic resistance.

Dr Glennon went on to explain how proteins associated with dementia could be studied using such techniques and said she was impressed by the questions she received afterwards.

“All the boys were scheduled to have Biology lessons on the day,” said Biology teacher Martin Bassett-Jones. “It enabled all of them to have the opportunity to participate in the experiments. It was a rewarding experience, which the boys thoroughly enjoyed. We are grateful to Dr Glennon for visiting us again to share cutting-edge DNA research techniques with our Sixth-Formers.”