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Year 12 pupils drew inspiration for the start of their AS Politics course from a visit to Westminster.

The 14 boys visited Whitehall and the Houses of Parliament, before finishing the day with a workshop on debating.

Head of Politics Liam Hargadon said: “Parliament always inspires the boys who get the chance to visit. Afterwards they can more readily appreciate terms like ‘frontbencher’ and ‘backbencher’ MPs and understand the reasons behind some of the more obscure practices, all of which help to explain why Parliament works in the way that it does.”

The trip involved an opportunity to see Downing Street, Whitehall and Parliament Square, where the boys savoured the range of statues of historic figures and political leaders. A tour of the Houses of Commons and Lords including walking by the green and red benches and standing at the Despatch Box. The group also visited the 900-year-old Westminster Hall, which is the oldest building in the Parliamentary estate and has been the venue for countless historic occasions, including the lying-in-state of the Queen Mother and addresses to joint sessions of Parliament by successive world leaders.

The workshop on debating focused on what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable parliamentary language; why, for example, MPs never ‘lie’ but may instead be ‘economical with the truth’.

Sixth-Former Maaz Shahzad has won a bursary and work placement from a prestigious City law firm – one of just four overall winners in a fiercely fought competition for state school pupils.

For the initial stage of the competition run by CMS Cameron McKenna, Year 13 pupil Maaz, who hopes eventually to become a barrister, first submitted his academic results to date, with a reference from the School.

He also wrote a 1,000-word essay, for which he was given the choice of two titles – Does the UK have responsibility for citizens abroad? or Is tax avoidance legitimate? Opting for the latter, Maaz argued that not only was tax avoidance legal, unlike tax evasion, and therefore legitimate, but that the Government actually promotes it, through ISAs, for example. It is beneficial for individuals and the state for individuals to save and invest, and they are thus encouraged by the government to do so through ISAs and other tax relief schemes.

Maaz was then among 12 students selected for an assessment day. This involved taking part in group tasks with other candidates at Cameron McKenna’s City offices, focusing on negotiation skills. The day included an interview, which covered various legal issues.

In a letter to the Headmaster announcing his success, Cameron McKenna solicitor Sarah Hyde, who heads the scheme, wrote: “We felt that Maaz was an outstanding candidate who coped impressively with a challenging assessment day and we were delighted to award him one of our bursaries. The standard of applications was high and we believe that Maaz should be very proud to have been one of the four students awarded a bursary.”

As well as the bursary, which is worth £2,500 for each year of a student’s law degree, Maaz has also been offered mentoring from a Cameron McKenna lawyer and a work placement at the firm’s offices during his first year of university.

Maaz is currently studying for A-levels in Mathematics, English, History and Politics.

A special event at QE encouraged boys to think globally when making their university choices.

The lunchtime and early-afternoon Global Education Fair in the Shearly Hall brought representatives from 15 universities in Australia, Canada, Finland and the USA to the School.

Organiser Sarah Westcott, who is QE’s Head of Pupil Development, said: “The event, which was well-attended by a large number of Sixth-Formers, aimed to encourage our boys to think widely and consider the global context when making university choices.”

“Studying abroad can also be considerably cheaper, with, for example, Finland offering completely free education to UK students (unaffected by the recent Brexit vote),” Dr Westcott said. She added that the fair was also attended by representatives of specialist colleges recruiting for business and languages courses which were looking to train graduates for jobs in the European business market.

In recent years, QE boys have won places at a number of overseas universities, including Yale, Harvard and Stanford in the US.

The fair was organised by BMI, a company specialising in international student recruitment. In its information for the boys, it stated that the biggest reason given by students for not going overseas was the intimidating prospect of finding a place to study and then actually moving there. The fair aimed both to address these concerns and to set out the advantages of studying abroad, which include:

• Opportunities to learn a further language
• Gaining a sense of independence
• The chance to avoid incurring the large debts typically accumulated by students in the UK
• A broadening of students’ horizons
• Advantages in the employment market, since employers value those who have the courage required to study abroad and also value the additional experience that these students gain.

Year 7 pupil Yusuf Karim heads off to Italy to represent England at karate this week. 

Yusuf will compete in the Karate European Championships 2016 in Montichiari, having already taken a medal for his country at the World Championships in Dublin earlier in the year.

Yusuf won silver in the Team Kata category in Ireland and just missed bronze in the Individual category – a performance which placed him fourth among some 90 competitors from all over the world.

After starting in the sport four years ago, Yusuf moved to the England Shotokan Karate Federation around 18 months ago and was initially selected to take part in local competitions. Then at the Welsh Open last year he won gold and silver medals. At this year’s Polish Open 2016, held in Szczezin, he won the Team Kata gold medal and Individual Kata gold medal against opposition from Polish, Czech and Romanian competitors. And recently at the UK Open, he took the Team Kata bronze (Open category) and Individual Kata Silver (11-13 years).

Yusuf follows a training regime, training at different dojos to benefit from working with different squad members. He routinely travels from his home in East London to Lewisham in South London for three hours of squad training every Saturday and trains twice a week for two hours after school in Forest Gate. Sundays see him travelling as far as afield as Sheffield, Birmingham and Wales for UK-wide competitions. And in the run-up to the World Union of Karate-Do Federation’s (WUKF) World Championships in Dublin, he and his family made the trip to training almost every day.

Members of QE’s new VEX Robotics Club for Years 8 and 9 will be preparing to take part in competition next year – and having a great deal of fun in the meantime!

Organised by technology teacher Michael Noonan, the club will enter teams in the worldwide VEX Robotics Competition, in which participants have to build and then program a robot to complete certain tasks.

“The aim of this club is to foster highly competitive, assertive and creative young robotic engineers while also developing team spirit by putting pupils together with boys from another year group,” said Mr Noonan. “Members will be taking part in local rounds in January and February in the hope of qualifying for the national competition in March, but if we reach that stage in our first year, that will be a bonus, really – our primary aim for now is to have fun experimenting and designing through robotics!”

The after-school club meets three times each week. So far, the boys have been exploring basic designs and concepts, and have been looking at some of the successes of neighbouring schools such as East Barnet School and Henrietta Barnett as a source of inspiration and motivation.

The influential Labour peer and entrepreneur, Lord Alli, was the latest guest speaker at QE’s thriving Politics Society.

He told the boys about his rise to wealth and fame from humble beginnings and his role in the Labour Party in years past, but also gave his assessment of Labour’s position today. And while Jeremy Corbyn’s analysis of the problems facing British society, including inequality and the pitfalls of globalisation, was correct, his strategy for tackling them was not: it made Labour unelectable, Lord Alli said. Yet the answer was not simply a question of turning back the clock: he ruled out a return to New Labour centrism.

The visit by Baron Alli of Norbury was arranged by Adrian Burbie and the meeting was chaired by Adrian’s successor as president of the Politics Society, Rehaan Bapoo.

Rehaan reported that Lord Alli’s account of his early years in South London revealed that he and his family were extremely poor and could, for example, ill afford ‘luxuries’, such as suits for job interviews. To this day, he is unable to open brown envelopes, because of the trauma that bills once brought to the household.

Both his parents are from the Carribean. His mother, a nurse, is from Trinidad, while his estranged father, a mechanic, is from Guyana (formerly British Guiana).

He began his life in business as a junior researcher in a finance magazine, where he compiled monthly business reports – a skill for which he quickly gained a strong reputation. He became an investment banker in the City, where he thrived and first became wealthy.

Lord Alli then set up 24 Hour Productions in the late 1980s with Charlie Parsons, his life and business partner. In 1992, the company merged with Bob Geldof’s Planet Pictures to form Planet 24, one of the largest TV production companies in the UK.

In 2001, with Elisabeth Murdoch he co-founded Shine Media, a media production company, and retains part-ownership.

He is a former chairman of ASOS.com, a brand he helped to set up that is now worth £5.8 billion. He sold half his stake in ASOS in order to set up Silvergate Media, in August 2011.

Now a multi-millionaire, he told the boys that he believed the rich (including himself) should pay much higher levels of tax.

Lord Alli joined the Labour Party in the mid-1990s, believing that not enough young people were in politics, and feeling that he wanted to make a change and have his voice heard.

Following the sudden death of Labour leader John Smith in 1994, it was he who wrote to Tony Blair, persuading him to stand as Leader of the Labour Party and offering his services to Blair’s leadership election campaign. Blair accepted.

He was a member of Tony Blair’s ‘kitchen Cabinet’ and, Lord Alli told the boys, Blair requested his help on numerous occasions: the PM wanted to reach out to younger members of the public and to increase their interest in politics.

In 1998, he was appointed to the House of Lords, becoming the youngest-ever member at only 34 years of age, as well as the first openly gay member. It was during a heated exchange with Conservative opponents, led by Baroness Young, that he revealed that he was gay. In April 1999, he said in a speech to the House: "I have never been confused about my sexuality. I have been confused about the way I am treated as a result of it. The only confusion lies in the prejudice shown, some of it tonight. and much of it enshrined in the law.”

He was instrumental in the ultimately successful campaigns to: repeal Section 28 – a part of the Local Government Act which which prohibited local authorities from promoting homosexuality; to reduce the age for consent for homosexuals from 18 to 16, and, in 2009, to repeal various clauses in the 2004 Civil Partnerships Act which prevented religious institutions from having Civil Partnerships registered on their land.

Lord Alli took the introduction of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 under David Cameron’s Tory premiership to be “a sign of his lasting legacy” and an indication that true progress had been made.