Covid-19: Children

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con) [V]]

My Lords, we have seen the remarkable resilience of children through the pandemic while also seeing the negative impact on their well-being and, in too many cases, their academic progress. We owe it to this next generation to help them to rebound from this pandemic. We know that children respond well and quickly with the proper support and assistance. I have spoken before about the challenge of so many things switching to online during the Covid lockdowns. For many children, schooling was a real struggle, with families sharing one device, often a mobile phone, between them, and many not having wi-fi at home.

This leads me on to talk about the excellent work carried out by the ClementJames Centre, where one of my daughters is a trustee. The ClementJames Centre is a charity operating in North Kensington and now celebrating its 40th anniversary. It helps children and young people to learn and flourish, and achieve their potential through academic support, mentoring, literacy and numeracy support and, in normal years, a very colourful carnival programme in the summer. It works tirelessly with children to help make learning fun and has continued its work throughout lockdown, and at the centre since the return of groups of children has been permitted. The charity has been providing 10 weeks of one-to-one support for either maths or literature and found that in two and a half months, a child can catch up on a year of learning. Obviously, this varies depending on the year, group and child, but the charity has found that this support has been invaluable in making a real impact on a child’s life, and helping them grow in confidence.

With the summer holidays approaching, there is always that challenge between having a break from schoolwork and studying. Perhaps the ClementJames model is one to be adopted by other organisations this summer. ClementJames has used more volunteers to help, as one-to-one support is labour-intensive. This has the double benefit of helping the children thrive academically while the volunteers have enjoyed helping. One of the most common things, it says, is hearing how children have missed reading. It has been a struggle for the ClementJames Centre to find free access to children’s books when so many of its resources were originally out of bounds in the centre and the libraries were shut.

I have also heard from other sources of children running out of books to read and being desperate to borrow them. I urge the Minister look at whether there is some way to provide more free access to books online for the young to encourage reading at any time. Too often, libraries focus on providing adult literature or resources online, yet being able to read a book for your age group, or hearing an audiobook read by someone else, is a great way to learn without realising it.

I thank the noble Baroness for bringing this debate to the House. We have had top-quality contributions, including mention of the two birthdays today. Irrespective of which Benches we sit on, I believe we all want to help the next generation in whatever way is possible.