Viewing archives for Uncategorized

Members of QE’s Combined Cadet Force joined local Gurkha soldiers and other cadets and reserve forces at this year’s Armed Forces Day parade.

The boys, from Years 9-13, took part in a parade and inspection at the School first, before joining the First Parade at Hendon Town Hall. This was followed by the March Past when the Mayor of Barnet, Councillor Mark Shooter, took the salute and raised an Armed Forces Day flag above the Town Hall. After the parade, the boys enjoyed refreshments before returning to School.

This year’s Armed Forces Day marked the 75^th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and the 70^th anniversary of World War II and the 200^th anniversary of Gurkhas serving in the British Army.

Addressing the parade, the Mayor said he was proud that of the 200 or so such events around the country, the borough’s was one of the largest. He said it was a privilege to take part in the event and to pay tribute to those who serve the country. He spoke of the vital role of the Armed Forces Reserve, which makes up a sixth of the total UK armed forces. And the Mayor also acknowledged members of the Burnt Oak Nepalese Community and the Brigade of Gurkhas Association who took part in the ceremony.

Among other VIPs were Martin Russell, Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London, and the Lady Mayoress, Melissa Shooter.

QE’s CCF was formed in 1992 and is sponsored by the Corps of Royal Engineers. Boys are eligible to join from Year 9 and have to show at least a moderate degree of physical fitness. Selection depends on completion of a number of simple physical tests, including a 1.5 mile run in under 14 minutes and a best effort at 40 sit-ups and 40 press-ups, both in two minutes.

The number of QE boys who achieved gold certificates in a prestigious national Mathematics competition has nearly doubled this year. Of the 271 boys from Years 7 & 8 who took part in the UK Junior Maths Challenge, 134 were awarded gold, compared to 71 last year.

A further 94 were awarded silver certificates, up from 44 in 2014 and 34 received bronze, up from 16 in 2014. “Only the top 40% of participants nationally receive a gold, silver or bronze certificate, in the ratio of 1:2:3,” said Assistant Head of Mathematics, Wendy Fung. “That alone demonstrates how well our boys have done.”

The ‘best in school’ award went to James Tan of Year 7 (pictured above left), who scored 129 out of 135; the best in Year 8 was Ikechi Mere (pictured above right), who scored 121. James went on to gain a Distinction in the Junior Olympiad, the competition which follows on from the Junior Maths Challenge.

The competition is run annually by the UK Mathematics Trust; the test comprises 25 multiple choice questions which have to be answered in one hour. The paper is taken at the school under normal examination conditions.

Eleven boys  qualified for the Junior Olympiad and a further 57 qualified for the Junior Kangaroo. Both are follow-on rounds from the UK Junior Maths Challenge. The Olympiad is by invitation only and is for the top 1,200 students in the country from an entry of more than 250,000. It takes the form of a two-hour paper with more in-depth mathematical problems. The Junior Kangaroo is also an invitation-only event, but has been expanded this year to allow several thousand candidates to take part. It is a one-hour multiple-choice paper with 25 questions, similar to the Junior Challenge but with slightly more difficult questions.

In the Junior Olympiad, Ikechi's score gained him a Merit, whilst James succeeded in being awarded a Distinction, together with a medal and a book prize.

“I am delighted with the boys’ achievements, especially given their young age, and look forward to their further success in Mathematical competitions in future,” said Miss Fung.

Holocaust survivor Steven Frank told the story of his family’s experiences under the Nazis in a special talk given to the whole of Year 9.

The boys gathered in the Main Hall for an entire afternoon to hear Mr Frank’s account of how life changed tragically and for ever for his parents and brothers after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940. Staff were also invited to attend.

Head of History Helen MacGregor said: “We wanted to devote plenty of time to Mr Frank’s talk so that boys were able to reflect fully on what he had to say. Mr Frank uses such visits to perpetuate the memory of the children who did not survive and of those who, like his father, spoke out against the Nazis and paid the ultimate price for their courage. It was, of course, a very sober occasion, but I know that the boys were tremendously appreciative and will now play their part in ensuring the Holocaust is never forgotten.”

At the time the Nazis invaded, Mr Frank was five years old and the family lived in Amsterdam. His father, Leonard, was a well-respected lawyer still in his thirties who sat on the board of a large hospital for the mentally ill. The family had offers to help them escape to Britain, but Leonard Frank was worried about the patients and refused to flee.  Instead he became involved with underground activities and also spoke out publicly against the Nazis. At times, the family even hid people in their house.

In December 1942 Leonard Frank set off for work, but he never returned home.  He was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a prison where he was interrogated for his underground activities.  

Shortly after, Steven’s mother and brothers received notice that they were to be sent away. First they were taken to a prison camp for privileged prisoners because of Leonard’s connections, but eventually the four of them were sent to Westerbork transit camp – a holding place from where Dutch Jews were held until they were deported to camps in Eastern Europe.

After watching their friends and loved ones loaded on to trains and sent away, the Frank family were eventually deported to Theresienstadt ghetto camp in occupied Czechoslovakia in September 1944.

Theresienstadt was an old disused barracks and despite containing many permanent buildings, people were still forced to live in terrible conditions with little food or access to water. By the time they arrived, it was very overcrowded and disease flourished, killing thousands of people. Steven’s survival owed much to his mother. She got herself a job in the camp’s hospital laundry, one of the few places with regular (hot) water, where she secretly washed people’s clothes in exchange for scraps of bread. She mixed these with hot water and took this ‘bread porridge’ to her sons in a tin saucepan.

For many, Theresienstadt was just a stopping point – those who did not die from disease were usually transported to other camps to be gassed. Steven remembers the horrible scenes when the Nazis intentionally split up families so that those left behind were mentally tortured with the knowledge of what might be happening to their loved ones.

Fortunately for his family, the war ended before they were deported: he and his brothers are three of only 93 children who survived Theresienstadt out of the 15,000 children who were sent there.

Steven never saw his father after he was arrested. Leonard Frank was deported from the prison in the Netherlands to Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland, where he was gassed. He was only 39 years of age.

After the war Steven, his brothers and mother moved to England to try and rebuild their lives. For the past 18 years, he has been telling his story to groups all over the UK with the Holocaust Educational Trust. He is pictured showing some pupils a piece of yellow cloth printed with the Jewish Star of David from which the 'bdges' were made that Jewish people were required to wear in Nazi Germany.

QE’s Junior Awards Ceremony celebrated excellence and endeavour among high achievers from Years 7—9, with the Headmaster stressing the importance of character in education in his speech.

More than 100 prizes were presented by the Guest of Honour, Old Elizabethan Peter Morcos (1999-2006). The awards covered not only academic subjects, but also house awards, prizes for commitment and a number of endowed prizes and special awards.

VIP guests, teachers in their gowns, prize-winners and their families gathered in the School Hall for the afternoon event. Among the VIPs was the Mayor of Barnet, Councillor Mark Shooter, who gave an address. Elected earlier this year at the age of 43, he is the borough’s youngest-ever Mayor.

In his speech, Headmaster Neil Enright spoke on the development of character.  Currently an important theme in education nationally, its value has in fact long been recognised at QE and will remain so, he said. “It is interwoven into everything the School does. We seek to foster in our pupils personal qualities such as grit, adaptability, resilience and an optimistic attitude.”

Character at QE is specifically nurtured through a well-developed and recently enhanced system of bespoke tutorials and individual coaching sessions. “From my own experience of encountering boys in these one-to-tone meetings, I can see very clearly the time invested in this activity bears considerable fruit in terms of character development,” said the Headmaster.

He added that the locus of character development at QE is to be found not only in the classroom, but also in activities such as gruelling Duke of Edinburgh Award expeditions, the dedicated pursuit of success by sports teams and in music performances requiring months of practice.

In his speech as Guest of Honour, barrister Peter Morcos told the prize-winners that they should be proud of their achievement: “Even amongst a very select group of young men, you have managed to prove yourselves as worth of particular mention. You should not underestimate that.”

After leaving QE with straight A grades at A-level, Peter went on to graduate with first-class honours in Jurisprudence from Lincoln College, Oxford. He gained a string of awards at Oxford and during his subsequent studies at London’s BPP College of Law and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Drawing lessons from his own experience, he offered the boys two pieces of advice. “The first is this: you only truly fail when you give up. We all encounter setbacks. We do not often put those setbacks on our CVs or on our Facebook feeds. Real failure is when we do not try, when we no longer strive for the next success.

“The second part is this: when you decide to do something, do it with energy. Do not do it half-heartedly or begrudgingly. Do it happily; do it with ambition.”

The event was punctuated by highly accomplished musical interludes performed by junior musicians: Joshua Wong from Year 7 (violin), Alistair Law from Year 8 (piano) and Uday Kataria from Year 9 (flute). The programme ranged from works by Chopin and Kreisler to the Processional and Recessional pieces at the start and end of the ceremony that were composed by senior QE boys.

After the ceremony, guests enjoyed tea and cakes outside on the front lawn in the sunshine, with the prize-winning boys and their families able to mingle and converse with the Headmaster and teachers.

QE boys enjoyed a visit to the huge Roman palace where scenes in their Latin textbooks are set.

The trip to Fishbourne Palace in West Sussex was the first QE trip in support of Latin learning for many years and it follows the School’s reintroduction of Latin as a full part of the curriculum in 2012.

Forty-five Year 8 pupils went on the trip and enjoyed activities including pottery-making and dressing up in Roman clothes during a talk from archaeologists.

The 45 boys and four members of the Languages department took the coach to the Palace in the village of Fishbourne, near Chichester. Built in the 1st century AD and extensively altered in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Fishbourne Palace is by far the largest Roman residence known north of the Alps, with a larger footprint than Buckingham Palace. Little is known for certain about who lived in the Palace, but it remained in use for more than 200 years before it was abandoned after sustaining serious damage during alterations in around 270 AD. The Palace was first excavated in the 1960s.

During the trip, boys were shown a film on the history of the site, enjoyed a visit to the mosaics and gardens of the Palace and spent time in the site museum built by the Sussex Archaeological Society. The remains include a perfectly preserved mosaic of a cupid on a dolphin in the north wing.

In an entertaining artefact-handling activity, the QE party learned more about how archaeologists can determine information from what they dig up, during which some of the boys were able to dress up as a Romano-British prince.

In the clay-making activity, they used Roman techniques to make an oil lamp, dice & counters and a pot.

Dr Helen Shephard, who organised the trip, said: “The trip certainly helped bring to life the Latin we have been studying this year, particularly as the stories in our Cambridge Latin Course textbook are set in this very Palace.”

Two Year 9 boys were among only a handful of prize-winners from a field of 150 young people at a literary review competition in London.

Fifteen QE pupils from Years 8, 9 and 10 took part in the WeRead event at University College School, Hampstead. The boys had to read and review at least one of six shortlisted books in advance.

“Manojj Mohanaranjan and Binu Perera both wrote really insightful reviews and are to be commended on their achievement,” said QE Librarian Ciara Murray.

Binu reviewed Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys: “After reading the first few lines of blurb, I wasn't exactly convinced that this book would be a good read, because personally I thought that it would be quite childish and predictable. I guess that that just goes to show that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.” He rated the book as 5/5 for its “unputdownability”.

Manojj reviewed Apple and Rain by Sarah Crossan, also rating it at 5/5. “This book has not only shown me the insight into one life, but has taught me something about my own.

Although things come together at the end, it is not how Apple expects, but that is one lesson of life. Life is what you make it and families come in many forms, like Apple’s. Finally, being human means we make mistakes and aren’t perfect, though we always try to be,” he wrote.

The day also afforded the boys the opportunity to meet the authors and hear about how the books were written, as well as to purchase signed copies as souvenirs.

“I was extremely pleased with the standard of all our boys’ reviews,” added Ms Murray. “One of the best things about WeRead is that it introduced the boys to books they might otherwise not have read. It was also a great opportunity to hear directly from the authors about how they wrote their books and the obstacles and pitfalls they had to overcome.”

In her presentation, the author of Shine, Candy Gourlay (pictured above), said she wanted her audience to take away the idea of how important structure was to telling a good story. After the talk, several of the boys were keen to buy her book, and to get it signed. “I really enjoyed Candy’s talk – she had so much enthusiasm,” said Saad Mahmood, of Year 10.

After lunch, C J Flood (pictured right), author of Infinite Sky, which several of the boys had read and reviewed, gave a talk. In the Q and A session, Mipham Samten of Year 9 asked whether she considered the gender of her audience when she was writing. He pointed out that the cover of the book made it seem like as though it was aimed more at girls than boys. Flood replied that authors often do not get to make choices about their book covers. Given that two of her main characters were boys, and that they were responsible for driving much of the story, she felt there was a lot that her male readers could take away from the book.

“I asked her for tips, and she said to make sure you didn’t just take ideas from books you’ve read – that it was really important to put your own experiences into your writing,” said Naveen Weerasinghe from Year 10.