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Queen Elizabeth’s School is broadening the range of academic opportunities for its senior pupils with a new Sixth Form symposium arranged under a partnership with a leading independent girls’ school.

Thirty Year 13 boys and 30 girls from North London Collegiate School (NLCS) took part in the first symposium, which was hosted by QE. The event, which was timed to coincide with university interviews, will now be held annually. It follows a similar joint event for Year 10 pupils that NLCS held during the summer.

The symposium focused on a wide variety of subjects: History, English, Political Science, Medicine, Economics and Natural Sciences. For each of them, the groups are led by teachers from both schools, but it is the students who are expected to drive the discussions.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “We aim to stretch our pupils well beyond the level required in their normal A-level studies; promoting opportunities for academic discourse with students from other high-achieving schools is one important means of achieving that aim. We therefore hope to collaborate further with NLCS, as we are doing in a similar way with Henrietta Barnett.”

Tahmer Mahmoud, who is QE’s Head of Academic Enrichment (and Head of History), said: “These symposia develop students’ ability to generate and articulate sophisticated thinking in response to a given issue, as well as encouraging cooperative yet critical communication between students.

“At the first one, students took the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the nature of the academic disciplines that were selected and to broaden their knowledge of subject matter within those disciplines.”

The topics discussed at the symposium included:

• History – the secularisation of Europe; why intellectual movements emerge
• Economics – the eurozone crisis
• Medicine/Natural Sciences – the Human Genome Project; nano-technology; obesity
• Political Sciences – the limits of liberty; the nature of the human mind; the future of Higher Education in the UK.

Students were sent a pack of high-level sources a week prior to the day and were required to analyse them in order to contribute to the discussion effectively. Two students from either school led on one of the sources, bringing in the rest of the group for discussion.

The first session consisted in examining four sources. During the second, the students examined a set of new unseen sources and were given only half an hour to master the material.

“This first Sixth Form symposium with the girls from North London Collegiate School went very well,” the Headmaster added. “The teachers involved report that the event successfully challenged students to justify their thinking over sustained periods of rigorous questioning.”

Queen Elizabeth’s School ended the term on a festive note, with the annual Charity Christmas Concert, a number of smaller charity performances and the traditional Service of Nine Lessons & Carols. All featured high standards of musicianship from QE boys.

Members of the Choir and Top Brass performed carols in the Spires shopping centre to raise money for the Cherry Lodge Cancer Charity. On the same day, other Choir members sang at the Old Fold Manor Golf Club to entertain residents and staff from the Jesus Hospital Charity, while on the penultimate day of term the Saxophone Quartet, together with five Choir members, performed at the Ravenscroft Nursing Home.

This year was the 18th annual Charity Christmas Concert, which the School organises in association with the Rotary Club of Barnet. Money raised at the event in QE’s Shearly Hall will be used for the Christmas Day party for elderly people in Barnet who would otherwise be on their own and to support the Rotary Foundation’s international efforts to eradicate polio.

This year’s Rotary President Scott Maclachlan spoke of his pleasure in the continuing association with QE and related to the audience some of the work that the club undertakes, including providing a day out at the zoo for local, disabled, children.

QE’s Director of Music, Kieron Howe, said: “We are very glad of the on-going association with the club and pleased that we are able to help raise money for the many good causes in the local community and further afield.

“I would like to thank the directors of the ensembles, and also the boys themselves, for their continued hard work and dedication throughout the term,” he added.

The concert featured a varied programme, from seasonal standards by Handel and Tchaikovsky, to Christmas favourites from Howard Blake, Irving Berlin and John Rutter. Following performances by the Chamber Choir, the Senior String Orchestra, Camerata, the Concert Band, Choir and Symphony Orchestra, the audience were invited to join in with traditional carols including O Come All Ye Faithful and The First Nowell.

The School’s Service of Nine Lessons & Carols held at St John’s Parish Church featured readings by QE pupils of all ages, including the School Captain, Nathanael Jackson, and by members of staff. In addition to the congregational carols, the Chamber Choir performed the Magnificat from Evening Service in C by Charles Villiers Stanford.

In continuation of a School tradition, the ninth and final reading, from St John’s Gospel, was given by the Headmaster, Neil Enright. He was undertaking this duty for the first time, rounding off his first term as Headmaster.

A Year 13 team have progressed to the area final of a national Economics competition and are now working on changes to their entry to reflect the current economic turmoil.

Each year more than a thousand students from across the UK enter Bank of England & The Times Target 2.0 competition.

Taking up the challenge of setting monetary policy to meet the 2.0 per cent inflation target set by the Government, the QE team initially pinned their hopes on a steady-as-she-goes approach, holding interest rates at 0.5 per cent and keeping quantitative easing (QE) at £275 billion. They competed against six local schools, including Latymer and Mill Hill County High School, in the first round.

Economics teacher Michael Feven said: “The boys have done an excellent job of using the data to determine their appropriate policy response and they were indeed very happy with their win.”

The team split into two groups, with Ryan Murphy, Jay Patel, Jonathan Bradshaw, Dershil Shah and Sameer Karia undertaking substantial research into the UK and international economy. They then compiled all the data, and analysed it before deciding as a group what an appropriate policy response would be. The team then compiled a 15-minute presentation, which was delivered by David Alam, Chiraag Dattani, Akash Raja and Drew Williams to a panel of judges and followed by 15 minutes of questioning.

The February area final will take a similar format, and the team is already working on the changes that must be made to the presentation to reflect changes in the UK economy.

QE alumnus Ben Pugh (2002-2009) has helped his team from Pembroke College, Cambridge, to victory in the first leg of the quarter-finals of the BBC’s University Challenge.

He made a significant contribution to the team’s 240–160 point victory over Balliol College, Oxford, in the first of a two-part quarter-final. His team reached the quarter-finals after securing victories in two previous rounds.

Ben was very quick on the buzzer, answering a range of starter questions on diverse subjects including dance tempo, planet recognition, literature and geography, which helped his team to establish an early 90-point lead. He was clearly pleased with a question in his specialist field on the meaning of the Russian acronym Gulag – as he is reading German and Russian.

Ben studied English Literature, French, German and History at A-level at QE, securing a grade A in all four subjects – the top grade at the time. He was placed in the top five in the UK in AQA’s GCSE German and French courses. While he was a pupil, Ben supported younger QE boys in the weekly language clinics.

A team of Year 7 boys has won first prize in the Barnet Spelling Bee – a competition organised by the London School of Economics. The competition was established in order to discover and encourage Barnet’s best spellers, and to make spelling fun for children of all abilities.

Kriisan Manoharasundaram (on the left of the photo), Karnan Sembian (on the right), Oliver Robinson and Pranav Santhosh Kumar scored 44 points in the final, beating Hendon School, who scored 38, into second place. The same team also won the previous round of the contest. The boys each won a £25 voucher.

English teacher Sarah Snowdon, who accompanied the boys to the final at the LSE, said: “I was very proud of them; they behaved exceptionally and were sensible and excellent on a busy tube on the way in.”

• Here are some of the words the boys had to spell: accolade, siege, nominal, miniature, counterfeit, chauffeur

A talented Year 12 pupil has enjoyed the opportunity to perform at a major music festival in India, thanks to his earlier success at a UK competition.

Praveen Prathapan, who won the QE Senior House Music Competition, won the Indian music element of the Croydon Festival – one of the biggest Indian music festivals in the area. He was awarded a prize of £1,500 to spend on his own musical development.

He used the money to fund a trip to India where he performed at the prestigious Chennai December Music Festival and visited the music school run by Academy and Grammy Award winner, A R Rahman. A R Rahman, who wrote the score for Slumdog Millionaire, is one of India’s best-known musicians and composers.

“Praveen used the money to great effect and made the most of a fantastic opportunity to take part in such a wonderful festival, broadening his experience and knowledge,” said QE’s Director of Music, Kieron Howe.

Whilst in India, Praveen also conducted a number of interviews with noted Indian musicians as research for his Extended Project Qualification on the growth of Indian music. The EPQ is an additional qualification taken alongside A-levels, designed to stretch the brightest boys. Praveen is seen pictured with N. Ramani (as he is commonly known), the celebrated Indian Carnatic flautist. Praveen himself excels at the bansuri, another type of Indian wooden flute, the instrument upon which he won the Senior House Music Competition.