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A QE team finished in the top third in the national final of a chemistry competition, having qualified by winning their regional round.

The team, drawn from Years 9-11, took ninth place out of the 32 schools in the national final of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Top of the Bench competition, which was held in Loughborough. They had previously won the Chilterns and Middlesex District round – the fourth time QE has triumphed in this round in the past six years.

QE’s team members were chosen by their teachers after showing great promise in Chemistry. The team comprised Year 9 boys Vincent Tang and Alejandro Lynch Gonzales, Ashish Khimasia, of Year 10, and Michael Takla, from Year 11.

In the final, each boy had to sit a 35-minute written test alone, with one for the Year 9s and another for the pupils from Years 10-11.

Then, working as a team, they had to undertake a very demanding experiment with complex calculations. Chemistry teacher Elizabeth Kuo explained in detail: “This involved a transition metal titration with EDTA [Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid], measuring the emf [electromotive force] of a cell and using the Nernst equation to find the concentration of a metal ion.” It was, said Dr Kuo, the sort of practical that Sixth-Formers might be expected to do, well beyond the normal expectations for boys in Years 9-11.

A QE Sixth-Former has won a national award for financial journalism.

Year 13 pupil Sahil Suleman’s article examining the growing problems that young people face in getting on to the property ladder won him the ifs Young Financial Journalist Award and a cash prize of £150.

Alison Pask, ifs University College’s Vice Principal – Financial Capability & Community Outreach, wrote to QE’s Head of Economics Liane Ryan, to offer her congratulations. The competition judge, David Budworth, was impressed at the way “Sahil focused on the question and answered it logically, drawing on expert opinion and facts to back up his argument.” Mr Budworth is an award-winning freelance personal finance journalist and columnist and the former Deputy Money Editor of The Times.

Sahil’s 1,000-word essay, entitled Generation Homeless, was written in answer to the question What is the biggest financial challenge your generation will face?

His fellow Year 13 pupil, Akshay Ruparelia, also reached the final shortlist of just six students.

Ms Ryan, who organised QE’s participation in the competition, congratulated both boys.

ifs University College was founded in 1879 as the Institute of Bankers and has continued to take a leading role in professional education in financial services ever since.

2016 saw a leap in the number of boys qualifying for the follow-on rounds from the national Intermediate Maths Challenge.

A total of 280 QE boys from Years 9 to 11 took part in the UK Mathematics Trust’s Challenge. Forty-two per cent of them performed so strongly that they qualified to progress, with 24 reaching the Intermediate Olympiad – almost identical to last year’s figure of 25 – and no fewer than 94 qualifying for the Intermediate Kangaroo, a 77% increase on the 53 qualifiers in 2015.

“We are delighted with how well the boys have done and pleased with the increased proportion reaching the follow-on rounds,” said Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung. “Congratulations to all the qualifiers!”

In the initial Challenge round, the top 40% of pupils nationally receive a gold, silver or bronze certificate in the ratio 1:2:3. However, at QE, 91% gained certificates, with 124 boys (92 in 2015) awarded gold, 88 (102) silver and 43 (61) bronze. Each participating school or college receives a Best in School certificate. This was awarded to Aneesh Chopada, of Year 11, who scored 127 out of 135. Best in Year 10 was Kiran Aberdeen (120) and Best in Year 9 was Saruthan Seelan (116).

In the Olympiad, which features around 500 of the best mathematicians from schools across the country, Aneesh, Kiran Aberdeen, of Year 10, and Edward Hu, of Year 9, were each awarded a distinction certificate, a medal and a book prize; the book prizes are given to just the top 50 pupils nationally. Niam Vaishnav, of Year 10, and Ben Domb, of Year 9, were awarded a distinction certificate and a medal – given to the top 100 – and 16 more were awarded merit certificates, which go to the top 25% nationally. The Olympiad features papers entitled Cayley, Hamilton and Maclaurin.

A further 5,500 pupils from across all three year groups are invited to sit either the grey or pink European Kangaroo papers. These are one-hour papers, with 25 multiple-choice questions, taken by pupils from over 30 countries worldwide. The round derives its name from the independent Kangourou sans Frontières association, the creation of which was originally inspired by the Australian Mathematics Trust.

Twenty QE boys were awarded merit certificates for their performance in the Kangaroo; the rest received participation certificates. The top scorers in each year group were Yuri Evokimov, of Year 11, with 95 points, Aadi Desai, of Year 10, with 106, and Saifullah Shah, of Year 9, with 118.

Year 9 boys enjoyed a History Department trip to an air museum – and especially a rare chance to see a Spitfire take to the skies.

The visit to Imperial War Museum Duxford in Cambridgeshire provided pupils with first-hand knowledge of the aircraft and military equipment used during the two World Wars and with the opportunity to find out more about the people involved in those conflicts, which the boys are researching as part of this year’s course on The changing nature of warfare. In particular, they took the chance to learn about the Battle of Britain, which they have been studying recently.

The trip was for the whole of Year 9, with each half of the year going on separate days.

Head of History Helen MacGregor reported on a successful visit, with the boys’ enjoyment enhanced by their consumption of ice-creams and packed lunches in glorious spring weather!

“The boys benefit immensely from this experience,” she said. “There are great hangars with amazing planes which they love seeing.

“The best part was on Friday when we saw a Spitfire pilot practise his routine: he taxied directly past my group and gave us a wave while the boys cheered. Then he took off right in front of us and performed amazing loops and dives. We lay on the grass in the sun watching him in the skies.”

Journalist and author Tim Ross gave QE boys an inside view of the 2015 General Election, with its surprise result of an overall majority for the Conservatives.

In his lunchtime talk to the flourishing Politics Society, Daily Telegraph Senior Political Correspondent Mr Ross shared first-hand accounts from his confidential sources as he explained why journalists, including himself, who predicted a hung Parliament got it so spectacularly wrong. He has outlined his analysis in a book, Why the Tories won: The Inside Story of the 2015 Election.

Labour’s first mistake, he said, was Ed Miliband forgetting to mention the budget deficit in his 2014 party conference speech. This was exploited by the Tories who claimed it showed that cutting the deficit was not a key Labour priority. Mr Ross recounted tales from Labour insiders of how the Labour leader reacted.

With the polls putting Labour and the Conservatives level-pegging on 35%, Labour also suffered from the Conservatives exploiting voters’ fears of a Labour-SNP coalition. Labour made matters worse by refusing to quash any suggestion of such a coalition until late in the campaign.

Mr Miliband compounded his conference error by going off-script in the final leaders’ debate when asked if New Labour had overspent. Overall, the right-wing media magnified his vulnerabilities, depicting him as weak or weird, with The Sun running the notorious photo of him eating a bacon sandwich next to the headline ‘Save our Bacon’ the day before the election.

David Cameron also made gaffes and errors – such as confusing West Ham and Aston Villa and, more seriously, letting slip that he would not seek a third term as Prime Minister. Such errors did not, however, prove costly, Mr Ross said, largely because they were not really exploited by Labour.

Overall, the Conservatives:

• Were better disciplined, with their 5.45am first strategy meeting of each day, putting them at an advantage over Mr Miliband, who was ‘not a morning person’ and ordered Labour’s equivalent meeting to take place at 7.30am
• Had better strategy, appointing Lynton Crosby, the since-knighted Australian election strategist, and throwing all their resources at a shortlist of 100 target seats
• Were better prepared, having built up a database of different types of voter in the months leading up to the election – Labour were taken aback by this ‘stealth tactic’
• Had more resources, spending them effectively on targeted Facebook advertising – a total of £1.2m, against Labour’s Facebook spend of only £16,000.

Asked how long he thought Jeremy Corbyn would last as Labour leader, Mr Ross said he thought an imminent coup unlikely, with Labour moderates not yet sufficiently organised nor ready to challenge such a large mandate.

He predicted a modest comeback for the Liberal Democrats in 2020, since they would be seen as a ‘sensible alternative’ to the Tories.

Mr Ross was accompanied on his visit by his friend Paul March, an Old Elizabethan who in the early 1990s was one of the first Politics students of teacher Liam Hargadon, who is now Head of Politics and Head of Year 12.

Mr Ross’s book is available in the Queen’s Library.

Sixth-Former Sahil Handa has won a place at Harvard – as well as receiving offers from two other leading American universities and from universities in the UK.

Harvard in Massachusetts, one of the eight east-coast Ivy League universities, was recently named the world’s best university in the Times Higher Education rankings of global reputation. Sahil, a former School Vice-Captain, will take a Liberal Arts course there, majoring in either Politics or Philosophy.

Sahil, who is in Year 13, also received the promise of a generous scholarship from the University of Virginia, alma mater of Robert and Ted Kennedy, and was offered a place at the highly rated Stanford University in California, but after weighing up the pros and cons he opted for Harvard, the USA’s oldest university.

He is one of a number of QE boys in recent years to receive offers from overseas universities, and especially from America.

Sahil has always participated enthusiastically in School and community life. He won a Jack Petchey Award after heading QE’s peer-mentoring scheme – which he did in his role as Vice-Captain – and served as director of a youth-run charity organisation, The Youth Project. With over 1,500 volunteers in ten countries, this organisation co-ordinates initiatives to feed the homeless, mentor disabled children, build sports halls in slums and is running a mental health campaign. He is part of Hendon’s Leo Club (the youth programme of Lions Clubs), which involves fundraising and community service projects. He has received a Social Leaders Impact Award from the Future Foundations youth training organisation.

His ability was also recognised by global management consultancy McKinsey & Company, which selected him for one of its leadership schemes. “The programme involved a residential stay with the organisation, where I learnt about leadership and networked with successful young people,” he said.

His interests include theatre and dance. “I ran the School dance club for four years, which included taking the boys for performances inside School and out.” Sahil was also an individual finalist at a national televised dance competition, where he combined hip-hop and street dance with bhangra and Indian dance.

He was made a drama director at School and led a group of 35 actors in putting on a production of Hamlet while also working with disabled people in theatre workshops. Sahil performed in the West End with other QE boys as part of the Shakespeare Schools Festival. He successfully auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and, in total, has acted in more than 15 productions – both at School and elsewhere – often in leading roles.

He is a QE cricketer and also a badminton player. And Sahil was one of only 50 young artists from across London to be selected for the Royal Academy of Arts’ AttRAct scheme.