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Letter from the Headmaster
A grand celebration with our growing worldwide Elizabethan family
My heartfelt thanks go to everyone involved in making Founder’s Day 2026 such a resounding success.
Our thanksgiving service, together with the Roll Call and Reading of the School Chronicle, added lustre and gravitas to the occasion, while the FQE Fete was simply a joy, bringing together young and old alike in an atmosphere of fun. Even the weather smiled on us, with light cloud cover to stop us all overheating.
I am pleased to report that Founder’s Day was a financial success, too. Takings were strong, and we have quickly surpassed our £25,000 target. The current total stands at well over £36,000. That’s a tremendous result – a testament to the generosity of so many. Projects such as the refurbishment of our Main Building and the overhaul of our Biology laboratories, beginning this July and finishing in the 2027 summer holidays, just could not happen without financial support through the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s.
I greatly appreciate all who have given already. If you would like to add your contribution, there is still time to donate via our JustGiving page.
Founder’s Day is emphatically an opportunity for the whole Elizabethan community to celebrate together. In addition to all the current QE families and other friends who came along, it was good to see so many alumni join the fete and catch up with their QE contemporaries and teachers.
During the service, in a very good address, our Guest Speaker, economist Promit Anwar-Westander (OE 2002–2009), reminded us that success is not the absence of failure, urging on us the cardinal importance of persevering through failures, or "failing better", as he put it.
We have long had a culturally diverse community here at Queen’s Road. Now, with the opening of the first QE Global Schools, QE Dubai Sports City and QE Gurugram in India, scheduled for August 2026, the family of Elizabethans is about to expand geographically, too. I was delighted to welcome their Founding Principals, Dan Clark and Craig Cook, to share the festivities with us. These schools represent a new beginning, yet they will at the same time be deeply rooted in QE Barnet’s proud history. It was therefore fitting that during the church service, Mr Clark and Dr Cook were presented with replicas of our 1573 Great Seal to take to their schools as they count off the final weeks towards opening.
The fete was a tour de force of organisation, masterminded as ever by the stalwart members of the FQE Fete Sub-committee. There were far too many attractions to name them all. Suffice it to say that I saw many happy faces as people tucked into delicious food from around the world, burned off energy at the bouncy castle, tried their luck at the tombola, or took (friendly) revenge at the stocks and at the bowl-a-teacher-out stall. Many enjoyed the stage programme, where the acts included the School’s new hip-hop dance group and QE mums ‘stealing the stage from their sons’ with a demonstration of Bollywood dance, and other colourful performances.
None of this could happen without the FQE volunteers, so if you enjoyed the fete this year, please do consider volunteering for next year’s Founder’s Day, taking place on Saturday 19th June 2027. I am sure that planning will start soon!
Mr Neil Enright
Headmaster
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