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QE’s thriving Medical Society has welcomed a string of guest speakers, including an Imperial College professor and an old boy of the School who spoke about life as a junior doctor.

The lunchtime Medsoc is organised by Year 12 pupil Bushry Basheer, who also arranges the speakers.

Bushry recently welcomed back to the School Old Elizabethan Kiran Patel (2000–2007) (pictured left), who previously visited QE as the Guest of Honour at the thanksgiving service on Founder’s Day in 2014. He studied Medicine at King’s College London and qualified in 2013, then completing his two years of foundation training at Barnet and Chase Farm hospitals, as well as with University College London Hospitals. He is currently in the first year of his core medical training at Northwick Park Hospital.

Kiran told Medsoc that he had no regrets about having chosen Medicine as a career: the skill sets it offers are in worldwide demand, while academically he finds it both challenging and enjoyable.

He welcomed questions from his audience of boys from Years 10-13, counselling them to think seriously before embarking on a medical career. The amount of responsibility that medics take for the life and wellbeing of others can be stressful at times, he pointed out, adding that Medicine was also not a career for those seeking financial reward. The route to becoming a consultant is long and involves a string of examinations requiring hard work and perseverance, he added.

Kiran hopes to become a cardiologist, having expressed an interest in the subject since he was in the Sixth Form.

He commented on the current junior doctors’ dispute: without the goodwill provided by staff working overtime, the NHS would collapse. Hence it was imperative for the Government to avoid further demoralising the workforce, Kiran said.

In addition to Kiran’s visit, Medsoc has welcomed OEs Athavan Thirukkumar and Mahenthran Thanurshan, (both 2003–2010), who were also keen to help a younger generation of pupils. Having started their higher education reading Medicine at Queen Mary University, the two are currently students at Barts and the London School of Medicine. They spoke on Life as a Medical Student.

Other speakers invited by Bushry in recent months include:

• Professor Paul Aylin (pictured right), a Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at Imperial, who spoke on the topic of the ‘weekend effect’ – the claim that you are more likely to die in hospital if you are admitted at a weekend – and the use of ‘big data’ in Medicine
• Ludvic Zrinzo, Consultant and Senior Lecturer in Neurosurgery at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. He gave a lecture entitled Sentient stardust and brain surgery in which he spoke about his work as a functional neurosurgeon – which involves inserting electrodes into the brain to stimulate electrical activity – and compared this to more invasive neurosurgery.
• Charles Till, a paramedic with the Red Cross and London Ambulance Service, who spoke about the importance of paramedics in acute Medicine.

Bushry also recently delivered a talk himself; he compared health systems across different countries, considering how the NHS could be improved (bureaucracy and cost-efficiency) and also where it is doing well (including end-of-life care).

All four QE groups in a prestigious Music festival reached the finals – and the School won the composition category.

Fourteen boys from QE took part in the 2016 Spring Grove Music Festival, an annual competition run under the auspices of the Springdene Care Homes Group for the benefit of the elderly. These groups were:

· Year 13 Piano Trio, featuring pianist Anhad Arora, Simon Purdy (violin) and Akhil Shah (cello)

· Barbershop, featuring Anhad, Daniel Cheung (Year 13), Alfie Clarke (Year 11), Simon and Varun Vassanth (Year 12)

· Saxophone Group, featuring Thomas Archbold (Year 13) and Rohan Radia (Year 12), as well as Rufus Kent (Year 11 – baritone), Sanjeev Menon (Year 11 – tenor) and John Tan (Year 10 – alto)

· Original Composition, featuring composer Drew Sellis (Year 9, playing alto sax), Tai Oyama (Year 9 – cello) and Bhirammah Ramanohar (Year 9 – violin and piano).

After the festival, its Director, Dr Robin Powell, wrote to the Headmaster to congratulate him on the School’s participation. “The judges felt that the 14 Queen Elizabeth’s School students who performed as four musical ensembles in both popular, classical, and composition music competitions did so with great skill and musicality.

“To pick out individuals seems invidious but I must mention Drew Sellis who, with the support of Bhiramah Rammanohar and Tai Oyama, triumphed with Swing Groove in the original composition competition,” wrote Dr Powell, who also complimented the “positive and supportive response” of the School’s Music department. The prize for the composition category was £250 for the School.

“In all, your students and your staff were a tribute to Queen Elizabeth’s School,” he added.

QE’s Director of Music, Cheryl Horne, reports that the boys in the Piano Trio were competing against four other groups and were narrowly pipped at the post: “Their feedback from the original heat was ‘…effective ensemble playing and an enjoyable performance. This was pretty much of a professional standard’ – which shows the skill involved at this level.”

The Spring Grove Music Festival started in 2005 with the aim of providing enjoyment and interest to the elderly residents of Spring Grove care home, which is on the Finchley Road, near to Swiss Cottage. Many Springdene Care Homes Group were present at this year’s event.

A QE team of four Year 10 boys has won a regional Mathematics competition, beating off challenges from other leading schools.

Kiran Aberdeen, Jahn Bautista, Sehj Khanna and Mudit Tulsianey were all selected to take part in the Maths Feast London event, which took place at Highgate School. The competition involves a number of rounds featuring problem-solving scenarios that require participants to combine mathematical, communication and teamwork skills.

Scoring 72 points out of a possible 85, the QE team emerged as winners against 11 competitors who included their hosts and The Henrietta Barnett School. Assistant Head of Mathematics and organiser Wendy Fung congratulated the winning four.

The nationwide Maths Feast competition is run by the Further Mathematics Support Programme, a Government-funded initiative supported by the Department for Education. Its format changes slightly every year to keep the various rounds interesting and exciting. Participants are encouraged to take the materials back to their schools and run the rounds with their classmates.

Young actors from Queen Elizabeth’s School were honoured with special invitations to perform at a top London theatre and at a gala dinner as part of the celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

Six of the main QE actors who performed an abridged version of Hamlet earlier this year in the Shakespeare Schools Festival (SSF) were among just 52 pupil actors from seven schools across the country specially chosen to perform in front of a sold-out audience at the SSF gala performance at the Piccadilly Theatre.

And then at the gala dinner, QE was selected as one of only two schools to perform extracts of their play in front of an audience studded with famous actors including: Simon Callow, Dame Eileen Atkins, Dame Harriet Walters, Juliet Stevenson, Tamsin Greig, Sir Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance (pictured with the boys, below), Fiona Shaw, Patterson Joseph and Sir Michael Gambon.

QE’s Drama Co-ordinator, Elaine White, said: “The gala dinner took place at the Middle Temple Hall in celebration of Shakespeare 400 and by invitation of celebrity photographer Alistair Morrison, who hoped to create an All the World's a Stage photo using a select group of actors closely associated with Shakespeare plays and sonnets.

“The students involved – six from QE and six from London’s Primrose Hill Primary School ­– performed a short interlude introducing the work of the Shakespeare Schools Festival with young people. They performed 'centre-stage' between the tables and interacted with some of the actors. We were then treated to a gourmet dinner, including caviar, in this very special venue.”

The boys involved, all from Year 13, were Jordan Tob-Ogu (who played Hamlet), Miles Huglin, Konstantin Nikolov, Alex Wingrave and directors Sahil Handa and Paavan Sawjani.

After the event, Ms White received a message from Mr Morrison: “Would you please thank the boys for their wonderful performances at Middle Temple Hall. I hope they all had a great time. They are very talented and really nice guys – they will go far.”

A QE Sixth Form team finished third in a national investment competition, only narrowly missing out on the top two spots.

According to the organisers, ifs University College, the four Year 12 boys “performed exceptionally well” in the tense final of the 2016 UK Student Investor Challenge, where they were competing  against seven other teams. They won £1,000 for the School.

Arnav Jhanji, Hayato Murata, Ashwin Ravichandran and Jas Shah, who named their team Doughnuts are Back, impressed the judges with their knowledge and understanding of financial investing, overcoming a tough live-trading challenge in which they responded to market events, before delivering an outstanding presentation on the household goods and home construction industry.

The team performed strongly in all three rounds of the competition: having successfully increased two virtual portfolios on the stock market over a three-month period, they accurately predicted the rise and fall of stocks, shares and assets at the semi-final stage. To reach the final, they outperformed nearly 40,000 other students from across the UK.

BBC business journalist and presenter Steph McGovern (pictured with the boys, above and below), who was one of the competition’s four judges, said: “It is an incredibly difficult skill to be able to decipher complex information and present it in an informative and accessible way, and Doughnuts are Back did exceptionally well in doing this. The level of research and analysis they demonstrated was superb.

“I know from my own experience the importance of taking part in competitions like the Student Investor and I hope they use the skills and experience they have gained throughout their careers.”

Alison Pask, Vice Principal Financial Capability & Community Outreach at ifs University College, said:

“Each year the level of competition in the Student Investor Challenge gets higher and higher, and my congratulations go to Arnav, Jas, Hayato and Ashwin. Not only did they have to win over a panel of financial experts with their presentations, they had to trade in a number of virtual assets and markets to finish as well as they did.”

The ifs Student Investor Challenge is the largest competition of its kind for schools in the UK and is run by financial education charity ifs University College. The competition is designed not only to improve students’ understanding of investing and finance, but also to improve key employability skills such as researching, teamwork and confidence.

QE’s Head of Economics, Liane Ryan, who organised the School’s entry, said: “I am very proud of our team’s achievement. The Student Investor Challenge final gave the boys an invaluable opportunity to present in front of a panel of industry experts and they, along with many of our students, have enjoyed participating in the competition and learning about trading and the financial services industry.”

Four QE boys achieved second place out of 35 schools in a hotly contested team Mathematics competition. The team was pipped at the post by Merchant Taylors’ School, who clinched first place by a margin of just four points.

QE captain Neel Shah, of Year 9, together with Bhiramah Rammanohar, also of Year 9, and Year 8 boys James Tan and Nilash Ambihapathy competed in the regional heat of the UK Mathematics Trust’s Team Maths Challenge, which was hosted by Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls’ School.

The competition combines mathematical, communication and teamwork skills and offers pupils a way of expressing and developing their enjoyment of Mathematics.

Competing against schools including ‘Habs’ boys’ and girls’, St Albans and Dame Alice Owen’s, the QE foursome scored a total of 221 points out of 236, beating Beaumont School from St Albans into third place.

QE’s Assistant Head of Mathematics, Wendy Fung, who organised the School’s participation, congratulated the boys on their performance.