Education through a pandemic: how we can improve life prospects for children in Gateshead

Because our children have missed out on a detrimental amount of school that followed into the six weeks of summer, it’s important that we help them to catch up. In doing so, it’s also the right time to recognise the problem of ‘book poverty’ - something that affects children particularly from lower income families in Gateshead.

With lockdown measures in the North East being tightened and the possibility that the country may go into a full lockdown this winter, there is a risk that schools will once again close. So we must adapt our children’s home habits and ensure that reading becomes an activity they do in their leisure.

Doing something about book poverty will help us make significant progress in:

1) achieving regional levelling up, and

2) giving our children a better life and a better, more secure future

And it’s something that we can all do to reduce. But the first step is to acknowledge and understand it. So what is book poverty (otherwise known as literary poverty)?

It’s something that more than a quarter of a million UK primary school children are experiencing, according to research by BookTrust. They found that:

• 345,000 primary school children in the UK receive less than 15 minutes of shared reading a week

• One in seven parents or carers never read their child a bedtime story

It is also a symptom of children simply not being encouraged to read at home. And when children only associate reading with classroom work and see it as a chore, they are less likely to read for pleasure.

Indeed, many homes may not even have books, and many children will never see their parents read either. It is a cultural problem among many low income families that can’t be changed overnight. But the good news is that it’s within our power to do something about it.

The solution, in theory, is simple. All children have access to books whether it’s from the library, a charity or from a free book stand in a supermarket. The problem is actually getting them to take those books home and to read them, or be encouraged to read by their parents.

How a little bit of reading at home benefits your child’s development

There are multiple proven benefits to reading, including:

• Assisted cognitive development
• Developing empathy
• Gaining deeper understanding of topics
• Building stronger relationships
• Improved literacy skills
• More extensive vocabulary
• Greater concentration
• Higher levels of creativity and imagination

But the importance of children reading at home is even more dramatic than we initially imagined. Malcolm Gladwell explains the achievement gap between children from lower, middle and upper income families in his book ‘Outliers’.

He writes of the misconception in society that the under-achievement of children from lower income families is down to them not having “the same inherent ability to learn as children from more privileged backgrounds,” and that “in some way our schools are failing poor children.”

But there is evidence that the disparity in achievement is a result of how children from different socioeconomic backgrounds spend their time outside of school.

In Canadian schools, children took tests at the beginning of the school year in September and at the end of the school year in June before they broke up for summer, every year. When comparing their exam scores at the beginning of the school year to the end of the school year, they found that the disadvantaged children’s results had improved more than the wealthiest children’s. They had outlearned the wealthier children by 191 points to 186 points.

However, when they compared the exam scores taken from June to the scores taken at the beginning of the next school year in the following September, they found this:

• Over the summer, the wealthiest children’s reading scores had jumped more than 15 points.
• However, the disadvantaged children’s had dropped by almost four points.

This showed that kids from lower income families may outlearn kids from wealthy families during the school year, but during the summer, they fall far behind. Gladwell summarises:

“The reading scores of the poor kids over those four summers go up by 0.26 points. When it comes to reading skills, poor kids learn nothing when school is not in session. The reading scores of the rich kids over the summer holidays, by contrast, go up by a whopping 52 points. Virtually all of the advantage that wealthy students have over poor students is the result of differences in the way privileged kids learn when they are not in school.”

But here is how we can remedy this issue. Many of us still have books from when we were children and teenagers, or books that our own children or family members have grown out of or already read, that we can donate to a charity or to someone we know. Or, if you are a parent, you can encourage your children to start reading this autumn and winter. If your children are younger, read to them. Order books from the library or visit a charity shop or book stand.

And if you are someone who struggles to access books or to read to your children, you can contact the Best of Bensham as we’re here to support you. Our partner, Borderline Books is a Gateshead charity that gives books to families and individuals who do not have them but would like to learn and read.

Please contact us via our Facebook page or email for help and advice.