Inside story: as schools stay shut, is a generation being lost to lockdown?

There are fears the government's failure to re-open schools will hit hardest in deprived areas such as the Byker Estate. Joe Shute reports

Junior Tams looking out from his bedroom on the Byker Estate
Junior Tams looking out from his bedroom on the Byker Estate Credit: Simon Townsley

Prior to the coronavirus lockdown, nine-year-old Junior Tams was thriving at his local primary school on Newcastle’s Byker estate. He was in the top set and particularly enjoyed science classes. Since then, says his mum Mary-Jane, who lives alone with him on the sprawling estate, his education has regressed to a worrying degree.

Over the past three months Junior has grown increasingly obsessed with the online computer game, Fortnite, shutting himself off in his bedroom for hours each day and piling on a lot of weight in the process. Whenever Mary-Jane, 34, who works in a part-time administration job at the local marina, has attempted any home schooling, they have clashed. “He’s got himself stuck into a little rut,” she says.

Byker Primary School, which Junior attends, has made online resources available to pupils - but Mary-Jane doesn’t own a laptop, and can only view them on her phone. So she has resorted to coming up with her own lesson plans: “I’ve been trying to get him to do things like writing a 20-minute story about how he feels about coronavirus,” she says. “Or just shouting random sums.”

The school remains closed to all but vulnerable children and those of key workers, but she has this week persuaded them to allow Junior to start attending on Thursdays and Fridays when she is at work. “His education is definitely a real worry,” she says. “I need him properly back at school in September.”

Her frustrations echo across the estate, and the country. In places like Byker, education provides vital social mobility for a community blighted by the impact of decades of unemployment and underinvestment. There are fears here the government’s failure to reopen schools could result in a lost generation. 

Mary-Jane Tams, 34, and her son, Junior
Mary-Jane Tams, 34, and her son, Junior Credit: Simon Townsley

Coronavirus has ruthlessly exacerbated the divide between rich and poor. According to a recent study by the UCL Institute of Education, one fifth of children have been doing either no schoolwork or less than an hour during lockdown, with the poorest the most likely to be in this category. Roughly half of private schools pupils have spent four or more hours a day working during lockdown, compared to 18 per cent of state school pupils.  

The most deprived parts of Britain have already been the hardest hit by Covid-19. Earlier this month figures released by the Office for National Statistics analysing deaths between March and May found the north-east had the highest proportion of deaths, with a rate double that of London. And there are fears the economic aftershock could be even more severe. A new report from the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales and Oxford Economics has singled out the north east – which went into the coronavirus crisis with the highest level of unemployment in the UK - as the region most likely to suffer the economic fall-out from the pandemic.

In normal circumstances, boys like Junior already face all manner of struggles growing up on the Byker Estate. Built in the Seventies by architect Ralph Erskine to replace dilapidated terraces housing ship workers on the nearby River Tyne, the estate is dominated by an imposing tower block known as the ‘Byker Wall’. The estate is Grade-II listed and has seen improvement in recent years – including in 2017 winning a neighbourhood award from the Academy of Urbanism - though it still ranks among the eight most deprived areas in the north east. Across the Byker ward as a whole, 49 per cent of children are living in poverty.

As well as schools closing, the estate’s community centre – a vital lifeline for many – has been shut for the duration of the pandemic. Families have been left isolated inside homes whose cheap plasterboard walls swelter in the summer heat. Of the UCL study released this week, which claimed one third of (predominantly wealthy) people have enjoyed lockdown, you would not find many of them here.

Michael Lyall, 3, with his mother, Sonia
Michael Lyall, 3, with his mother, Sonia Credit: Simon Townsley

Sonia Lyall, 29, has been confined to her home on the estate with her three children Michael, 3, Frankie, 5, and Paige, 9. A single mother on benefits, she too has struggled with home-schooling. In order to print out homework she was required to buy a printer and ink for £150, which ate into the family’s already meagre budget. Her youngest son is, she says, showing signs of being on the autistic spectrum and has coped particularly badly with the change of routine. She is waiting for a diagnosis but has been told it will take 19 months to be seen by an occupational therapist.

Sonia has struggled with anxiety and depression since her teens and says “during lockdown it has gone through the roof”. The government’s recent U-turn to extend free school meals (worth £45 a week to Sonia) will be a lifeline during summer. But, she says, as with failing to fully reopen schools, that reluctance to support vulnerable children has been shameful to see. “These decisions aren’t being taken with us in mind,” she says. “It feels like they don’t understand one bit.”

Residents have come together to help care for the vulnerable on the estate. On Raby Street – the main drag which runs through the estate and is notorious for antisocial behaviour – the Byker Pantry is a church-run project providing cheap food using a points system. Demand has rocketed during lockdown. In a temporarily closed youth centre opposite, residents have established the Byker Mutual Aid Scheme which every week arranges packages of food, clothing, books and games supporting more than 100 people.

On occasion Brenda Naylor, a 57-year-old support worker at a nearby school for autistic children and dinner lady, has used the Pantry to feed her family - although says she only does so sparingly to ensure food is available for others. The mother-of-four and grandmother-of-five has lived in Byker all her life. “We’ve lived through other recessions but this has been the worst,” she says. “It’s the isolation for everybody.”

One of those leading the community efforts is food poverty campaigner Penny Walters, who lives on the estate with her daughter, Heather. On the week that lockdown came into force, Penny, 54, was due to attend a House of Lords select committee hearing on food poverty with Baroness Boycott.

Food poverty campaigner Penny Walters who lives and works on the Byker estate
Food poverty campaigner Penny Walters who lives and works on the Byker estate Credit: Simon Townsley

At first she suffered badly with a resurgence of a long-standing depression and anxiety. For the first month, she admits over a cup of tea in her garden, she couldn’t even leave the house, but has sufficiently recovered to now be cooking hundreds of meals each week, which she delivers to vulnerable residents in sheltered housing on the estate – including a supported housing project for ex-servicemen and women run by the charity Launchpad which in 2015 was visited by Prince Harry.

Penny has also assisted with a research project run by Northumbria University and the charity Feeding Britain, which revealed 24 per cent of parents had restricted their own intake of food in order to ensure their children had something to eat during lockdown. The study found many parents are being forced to purchase items on credit or borrow food from friends and neighbours.  

As for the seeming failure of ministers to fully understand the damage it will do to the poorest families should schools fail to re-open, Penny’s message is stark. “They have no ideas of these challenges,” she says. “Because they’ve never had to face them.”

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