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The School’s Big Band performed with professional female vocal group, The Polka Dot Dolls, at the London Festival at Hendon St Mary’s.

The Dolls, who specialise in 1940s & 50s songs in the style of the Andrews Sisters, performed 15 songs including Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, with the Big Band providing the accompaniment. The School’s Director of Music, Kieron Howe, joined in a rendition of Don’t Fence Me In – singing the Bing Crosby vocal line. The boys also played some items on their own including Chattanooga Choo Choo and American Patrol. The evening, entitled From Byrd to the Blitz, also featured the choir of Hendon St Mary’s singing sacred and secular choral music by London composers.

“The concert was very well attended and the audience was enthralled by the boys’ professionalism and how they captured exactly the right sound and balance of this genre, which was unknown to them before,” said Mr Howe.

Other musical highlights of the term included the Brass Fanfare Group’s performance of Processional No. 1 and Recessional No. 2 at the Junior Awards. Both pieces were composed, rehearsed and directed by Year 12 student Chris Wong. And 42 boys took part in a Concert Tour to Durham, where they performed at venues including Beamish, the ‘living museum of the north’, and Durham Cathedral.

The work of the four QE boys who took part in the Lovell’s Engineering Education Scheme is to be presented to the Government’s Health & Safety Executive for consideration.

Burhan Ashraf, Sachin Leelasena, Karan Dewnani and Chris Wong were set a brief to design a more effective way to rescue an ill or injured operator from a tower crane.

Syd Appleyard from Select Cranes, who Chairs the Tower Crane Interest Group, was so impressed with the QE Team that he has asked them to present their project to the TCIG’s monthly review meeting and the HSE. “The team’s proposals were assessed by a team of engineering professionals and it’s clear that they solved many underlying issues that current solutions have missed,” said Mr Appleyard.

Meanwhile Osanne Gbayere, Keeran Sivalingam, Niraj Shah, Rushab Badiani, Michael Zhao and Sebastian Feszczur-Hatchett have all been offered final interviews to secure a place on the prestigious Arkwright scholarship scheme. This entitles students to a financial subsidy to help towards their academic studies and provides close working connections with cutting-edge engineering firms.

Over the last 10 years QE has forged strong exchange programmes with schools in France and Germany.

This term, QE boys visited the UNESCO Heritage site in Lyon, the Roman Amphitheatre and the Monastère de Brou in Bourg en Bresse. The boys also spent a day in the Collège St. Pierre in Bourg in lessons. During the trip to Bielefeld, there was a special visit to the Dr Oetker factory.

“The best way to learn a language is through immersion,” said Head of Languages, Caroline Mulderij. “These exchanges offer a great opportunity to practise language skills in a real-life context.”

A Year 12 QE student has secured a place on a much sought-after American summer school. Joseph Vinson faced stiff competition – with only one in ten applicants achieving a place on the Sutton Trust scheme. The initiative aims to widen the pool of talented UK youngsters studying in America.

The selection process involved the completion of a comprehensive application form which required Joseph’s GCSE results as well as details of his extracurricular activities and volunteering. Joseph also had to submit two essays, one on why he wanted to study in the United States and another on an influential figure. “I wrote about Carol Dweck, an American psychologist who developed the growth mindset theory, which I’ve been studying for my EPQ [Extended Project Qualification],” said Joseph.

Joseph, who is currently studying English, History, Politics and Geography, is spending this week in Yale and will also have the opportunity to visit other Ivy League colleges, such as Harvard, during his stay.

Multiple award-winner Mustafa Sarkar (OE 1997-2004) has been closely involved in a new study which identifies the right mix of mental toughness required to be an Olympic champion.

Sports psychology specialist Mustafa and his supervisor at Loughborough, Dr David Fletcher, interviewed 12 Olympic champions and found they share a unique mental resilience characterised by five key psychological attributes.

With Loughborough University hosting the Team GB Preparation Camp, the findings of the study have been used to help British athletes cope with the huge expectations they face competing at a home Olympic Games. The attributes identified should help them overcome the pressure – and even thrive on it – as they target Olympic gold.

They are:

A positive personality: Olympic champions possess positive personality characteristics including openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, competitiveness, optimism and proactivity.

Motivation: Gold medallists have multiple internal motives (such as passion for the sport) and external motives (such as proving their worth) for competing at the highest level. Champions consciously judge external pressures as important and so choose to perform in challenging sports environments.

Confidence: Gained from various sources including preparation, experience, self-awareness, visualisation, coaching and team mates.

Focus: Champions are able to focus on themselves without distraction, and to concentrate on the process rather than the outcome of events.

Perceived social support: Olympic gold medallists believe high quality social support is available to them, from family, coaches, team mates and support staff among others.

Mustafa and Dr Fletcher interviewed eight men and four women who had won Olympic gold at seven different Olympic Games spanning the past four decades. The champions represented nine different sports: figure skating, pentathlon, hockey, athletics, rowing, cycling, modern pentathlon, curling and sailing.

Mustafa said: “The interviews revealed many fascinating aspects of performing under pressure at the highest levels of international sport, but two things were very clear.

“Firstly, Olympic athletes experience considerable adversities during their preparation, training and competition, often over long periods of time. Secondly, and most importantly, athletes must learn to develop and maintain a very specific combination of psychological strategies and attributes to enable them to perform at their best and win in Olympic competition.”

Mustafa sat A-levels in Economics, Chemistry and Mathematics, before taking a gap year, during which he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers as an assistant tax consultant for eight months and travelled in South America for three months.

He graduated from Loughborough University in July 2008 with a first-class honours degree in Sport and Exercise Science and then went on to complete a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology (with distinction) from Middlesex University.

Since then, he has returned to Loughborough and not only gained a distinction on the MSc Psychology of Sport and Exercise programme, but also won several awards. These included the university’s Sir Robert Martin Faculty Prize for academic and non-academic achievements and the Head of School's Postgraduate Prize for Academic Excellence, awarded annually to the student with the highest overall mark in a Masters Programme. He also received the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES) Conference’s Masters Dissertation of the Year Award for 2011.

In addition, he won the Xcel Sports Student of the Year 2009 award, with the judges praising him both for his academic work and for coaching cricket with Loughborough school children, climbing five UK mountains for charity and running the London Marathon for charity, raising £2,350.

The interviews with Olympic champions were part of his MSc work. Mustafa is now studying for a PhD in Sport and Performance Psychology at Loughborough.

His research focuses on the psychology of sporting excellence and how this can be applied to other high performance domains. Specifically, it provides an insight into how high achievers deliver sustainable performance in high-pressure environments.

Year 12 pupil Shane Mahen’s essay has been selected for the final shortlist in the highly regarded Royal Economic Society (RES) Essay competiton.

Of the hundreds of entrants the competition attracts each year – some from as far afield as Singapore and Auckland – Shane is among just 18 who have made it to the final.

“We are very pleased for Shane that his essay has been so well received,” said Headmaster Neil Enright. “This is a competition that is renowned as demanding and rigorous. It requires an ability to express a high degree of economic knowledge in a fluent and well-presented style, so to make the final shortlist is an excellent achievement.”

Shane submitted a 2,500 word essay on the topic Africa is well-placed to achieve rapid and sustainable development in the decade ahead. Do you agree?

The annual competition is run in conjunction with tutor2u – an online tutoring platform that specialises in Economics and Business Studies. Co-founder Geoff Riley, who was formerly Head of Economics at Eton College, said: “The standard of writing this year was very high – judging by the quality of the entries, the future of our wonderful subject is in good hands.”

The final judging panel comprises Professor Richard Blundell of the RES, Charles Bean from the Bank of England and the BBC’s Economics Correspondent, Stephanie Flanders. The prize-winners will be announced in August 2012 and the first-prize of £1,000 and runner-up prizes of £500 will be awarded at the RES Annual Public Lecture in the autumn.