ON the evening of January 13, Queen Elizabeth’s School hosted its annual Celebration Evening.

This very special evening is the opportunity for the Queen Elizabeth’s community to celebrate the wonderful successes of some of the students, and is a highlight of the school year.

The main hall at the Barnfield Campus was elegantly decorated in the school’s colours of gold and black.

The silver cups to be awarded glinted on the stage and the year 10 Vcert Food and Cookery students were circulating among the guests to serve the delicious canapés they had prepared for the evening.

There were multiple prizes awarded in each subject area to those students who had demonstrated outstanding effort, made significant and positive contributions to school life, or had attained high levels of academic or sporting achievement over the course of the previous school year.

Each student was presented with a certificate commemorating their achievement and a £10 gift voucher, donated for the occasion by the Queen Elizabeth’s Education Foundation.

The awards were presented by staff who each had very positive, inspiring and often amusing things to say about working with the students whose progress and accomplishments the audience had gathered together to celebrate.

In addition, there was the special prize category, for students who had had exceptional academic success or had made a particularly notable contribution to school life.

In this category the prizes were, Fred Bevan for the Jackson Tasker Cup for Design and Technology; Cameron Reynolds-Beer for the OB Rigby Award for the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme; The Ten Tors 35 Mile Team (Dylan Dudley, Ed McCarthy, Matthew Goodman, James Hudson, Peter Boyle and David Gray) for the Outdoor Education Award; Tillie Clark for the Old Scholars cup for Oral English; Rachel Sved was awarded both the Daphne Cartwright Award for Art and the Edith Dart Award for English Literature; Lauren Isbister for the Arthur Hall Award for Graphics; Liam Adams for the EJ Prebble Award for Philosophy and Ethics, and finally The Jean Grinney Award for Care and Compassion was awarded to Rosie Box.

The awards ceremony was punctuated by interludes of entertainment provided by QE students, which saw the audience treated to a beautiful rendition of Brahms "Rhapsody No2", a solo performance of "Giants in the Sky", a song from the exciting upcoming QE production of "Into the Woods"; and two informative and entertaining presentations, "Journeys in Science" and "Highlights from the QE 2015 Namibia Expedition".

Professional musician and former QE student, Stephen Down returned to the school to deliver a motivating speech about how he used the spark of inspiration and the solid musical foundations he received as a student at Queen Elizabeth’s to forge his successful career in music, the highlights of which have included a world tour with Joss Stone and performing at The Royal Albert Hall and Wembley Stadium; he then performed "Waltz for Debby" by Bill Evans.

Lynette Grimshaw, Vice Principal at Queen Elizabeth’s said of the evening: “Here at QE we strongly believe in nurturing and recognising success, not just in terms of academic achievement, but also in terms of our students’ valued contributions to school life, community involvement and participation in a wide range of co-curricular activities.

"This evening has been a truly wonderful opportunity to witness and celebrate the embodiment of our guiding principles ‘educating to empower’ and ‘always progressing’”.

The 2016 Queen Elizabeth’s celebration evening was a jubilant and captivating event, thoroughly enjoyed by all those who attended.

Alan Quick