Practice makes perfect

A joint practice session gave QE boys the opportunity to work alongside girls visiting from St Michael’s Catholic Grammar School to polish their Extended Project Qualification presentations. 

The Year 13 students – 29 from QE and a smaller number from the north Finchley girls’ school – were split into small groups, each of which was allocated a different ‘breakout’ room. There they each had the chance to practise their presentations before defending their work in the face of intense questioning by the others taking part.

Extended Project Qualifications (EPQs) involve submitting a 10,000-word essay on an Arts or Science topic of the pupil’s choice and preparing and delivering a presentation on it.

“This was a very worthwhile exercise,” said Nisha Mayer, Head of Academic Enrichment. “The timing – just a few weeks before they had to do their EPQ presentations for real, before the official panel – couldn’t have been better.”

The titles of the dissertations were diverse, from Paul Yung’s In the next century will humans be able to achieve biological immortality? and Neal Dattani’s How can we solve the negative impacts of payday lending in the UK? to Bhavik Mehta’s Are human decisions inherently biased?

“The EPQ is a very highly-regarded qualification,” added Mrs Mayer. “It is taken by some of our brightest boys and counts as their fourth A-level.”