CONCLUSION 50 A number of former HGS pupils have hit the headlines in 2016/17, and it will be no surprise to many that they very often emerge in key positions locally and nationally. Mark Rowley QPM is the Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations of the Metropolitan Police Service and the man who appeared on our TV screens to speak to the world’s media after the horrific attack on Westminster Bridge and Parliament on 22 March 2017. Mark Rowley and his brother both attended HGS in the 1970s, and then he gained a place at St Catherine’s College, Cambridge where he gained a BA degree in 1986. He began his career in the West Midlands Police Service before eventually becoming the Chief constable of Surrey Police in 2009. He is now the second most senior Police officer in the country. Another former pupil so nearly became the first Metropolitan Mayor of the West Midlands in the May 2017 election. Siôn Simon attended HGS from 1979-1986 and then gained a place at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became a Labour MP from 2001-1010 and most recently stood for election as the Metropolitan Mayor of the West Midlands, narrowly losing to the winner, Mr Andy Street. Sion was very prominent on our TV screens and in the media as he fought to be the Mayor of the West Midlands in spring 2017. 2017 also saw the passing of the man once described as “Britain’s Greatest Living Poet”, and a former pupil of the school, Roy Fisher. A graduate of the University of Birmingham, Roy fisher became a teacher and then a lecturer at the University of Keele. He had an extensive bibliography and in 2003 was made a lifetime Honorary Poet of the City of Birmingham. He was made a fellow of the Royal society of Literature in 2005 and sadly died in March 2017 at the age of 87. Corey Blacket Taylor is a much more recent alumnus from HGS, and in March 2017, at the age of 19, he became the first ever ex HGS pupil to make his debut for Aston Villa, as he came on in the dying minutes as substitute in the 1-0 defeat to Huddersfield. Corey has kindly donated both his Aston Villa shirt and a signed England shirt, from his time in the England youth team to the school, and both now hang proudly in the school. We look forward to following Corey’s career with great interest. Chris Conway HGS OLD BOY SIR DAVID COX IS THE FIRST EVER RECIPIENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE IN STATISTICS Sir David Cox, former President of the Royal Statistics Society and Honorary Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford is the first recipient of the International Prize in Statistics. Like the acclaimed Fields Medal, Abel Prize, Turing Award and Nobel Prizes, the International Prize in Statistics is considered the highest honour in its field. Recipients are chosen by a selection committee comprised of world-renowned academicians and researchers and the award, worth $75k, will be officially presented at the World Statistics Congress. This inaugural prize recognises Sir David Cox’s 1972 paper in which he developed the proportional hazards model that today bears his name. The Cox Model has been applied in many fields of science and engineering, from disease risk assessment, treatment evaluation and showing the mortality effects of particulate air pollution to product liability. Famous Ex Handsworth Grammar School Students in the News in 2017 Photgraph by Jemimah Kuhfeld