Magical friendships
Take troubled teenagers. Link them to OAPs looking to fill a void. The result: ALL their lives were transformed
THIS time last year, 13-year-old Jacub was the very definition of a troubled teenager. With a difficult home life and struggling at school, he was angry with the world — and didn’t the world know it. He’d explode whenever he was picked on by another pupil, punching walls, slamming doors and throwing anything to hand. He spent much of his time excluded from lessons, and was no stranger to the after-school detention room.
Relations with teachers were little better. Unable to look people in the eye, he found it difficult to converse with adults. You’d be forgiven for thinking Jacub was going nowhere and that a life of under-achievement would follow.
But you’d be wrong. Because the Jacub standing in front of me today is a different boy. Calm and confident, he’s quick to catch your eye and engage you in conversation. So, what’s brought about this astonishing change? The answer is standing next to him — 71- year- old retired carpenter Clive Soames.
Until last summer, the pair had never met. They were brought together by a TV experiment to see if cross-generational friendships could help both old and young.
And though Old School With The Hairy Bikers might have been an unlikely formula for television gold — two TV chefs pairing teenagers with pensioners — watching the youngsters bond with their older mentors and grow in confidence has enthralled and moved viewers across the country.
The idea was born out of research in Japan and the U.S. that suggests getting youngsters together with pensioners not only increases the schoolchildren’s confidence and exam results, but also improves the memory and physical strength of the older participants.
So, the Hairy Bikers, Si King and Dave Myers — who both struggled at school — set about seeing if it could work in Britain.
They looked to Blackbird Leys, a huge housing estate on the outskirts of Oxford that in the Nineties was plagued by riots and joyriding. Even today, nearly half of the residents live below the poverty line.
In the middle is the Oxford Academy, a school that in the eyes of the locals is under-performing so badly that 600 of its 1,500 places remain unfilled. In 2014, just 28 per cent of pupils gained a GCSE pass at grades A*- C, which is one of the lowest results in the country.
Twelve ‘partnerships’ were formed of 13 and 15-year-olds teamed with pensioners. Included in the mix were some of the most disruptive and troubled pupils. Many of the older participants signed up because they were lonely.
All underwent a series of tests. The schoolchildren’s self- esteem and confidence were measured, as were the older members’ cognitive skills and mobility.
Then they met and were teamed up — sometimes because they got on well or because they’d shared a similar experience and teachers thought they could help each other.
Clive and Jacub came together for both reasons.
‘He just appealed to me,’ says Clive. ‘I could see he lacked confidence in his abilities, but he just had this energy. I knew he was at a crossroads in his life and if he took the wrong path it could be disastrous.
‘He needed help to take the right path and to use his energy in a good way.’ Jacub knew he needed help. Diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), he has to take daily medication if he’s to be allowed into school.
But the drug makes him feel sick and so he often forgets or refuses to take it.
‘I’m quite hyper and the majority of people do judge me,’ he says.
‘This was a chance for me to get to know older people, to change my attitude to them and to prove to them that kids aren’t bad. I also wanted to build my confidence.’
But there was another, tragic reason behind the pairing: both had suffered terrible losses.
Clive’s younger son, Matthew, had died of a heroin overdose ten years before, at the age of 35, and Jacub’s father had committed suicide when his son was just six.
‘Matthew was a clever lad,’ says Clive, who has another son, 49-yearold Justyn. ‘But it’s so easy for kids to get peer-pressured into something they wouldn’t normally do. They tend to experiment.
‘ This is what I’ve tried to get through to Jacub. If you’re a little bit vulnerable, you do it to please people — and this can lead to disaster.’
One of Jacub’s main problems was his temper. Classmates would tease him about his late father, knowing he’d lash out.
Much of that anger, it would seem, came from the pain of being unable to make sense of his father’s death or to understand why he’d left his son.
With his mum remarried, it was a subject he found difficult to broach at home, so he bottled up his confusion and sadness.
Clive, a calm, gentle man with a delightful twinkle in his eye, proved the perfect foil.
‘Jacub talks to me about his father,’ says Clive, who has three grandchildren. ‘And I talk to him about Matthew. It’s helped us both.
‘I tell him that though we have these losses, life goes on. We always remember them, but we have to carry on.’
For the experiment, each of the pairings met up for two hours a week, normally at the Academy but often further afield. Clive accompanied Jacub to another school, where he was starring as Tybalt in Romeo And Juliet, and also visited him at home.
‘It was after about four or five weeks that I noticed he was looking me straight in the eye,’ says Clive. ‘I could tell he was changing — calming down and growing more confident.’
Jacub’s transformation was also shown in class, where his punctuality and attention improved. There were fewer detentions, too.
As for Clive, he has also got what he wanted out of the project: using his vast experience of life to help someone in need.
Even though the cameras stopped rolling in January, the pair are still good friends and see each other regularly (‘Clive’s a legend!’ Jacub declares fiercely).
Not all the friendships fell into place so easily. One partnership didn’t even get started when the girl involved walked out after just a few minutes. Another ended a few weeks in because the older partner fell ill.
‘I knew he was at a crossroads and needed my help’ ‘He’d bottled up his sadness and confusion’
After about a month, the future of the project was thrown into question when many of the youngsters began complaining that the older participant wasn’t listening to them.
Only after an emergency meeting was called and the pensioners were encouraged to change their rather set ways was a crisis averted.
Some faced problems they had never expected.
Judy Watson, a 66- year- old mother- of- two, was teamed up with 13- year- old Tawne because both had experienced bullying at school. Judy put up with it for years and told no one.
‘I remember one of the bullies had a plaster cast on his arm and he thumped me in the stomach with it,’ says Judy.
‘I doubled up in pain — it was frightening. But back then, you just put up with bullying.’
Even so, it’s blighted her life. Judy says the childhood bullying is responsible for a lack of confidence that’s dogged her since and stopped her fulfilling her dream of becoming a nurse. ‘So if I can help someone else, I will,’ she says. Tawne desperately needed that help. Last year, she missed three months of schooling because of bullying. Not only was she ostracised at school, people would throw things at her as she walked home.
She also suffered extreme bullying online, with her tormentors discussing how she should kill herself. But during her time with Judy, Tawne revealed a far darker secret: she had been secretly selfharming by cutting herself.
‘ I didn’t know what to do,’ says Judy. ‘I was so worried about her, that she’d do something stupid, but I didn’t want to betray a confidence.’
The participants had been given guidelines that if a pupil revealed anything serious, such as abuse, then they had to tell the school.
‘So I called a teacher. I felt terrible and worried about how Tawne would react when she found out.
‘ But the teacher said that if Tawne had told me, it was a cry for help and she wanted me to tell someone.’
It was — and Tawne was given the specialist advice she so desperately needed. And while there are no miracle cures, Judy is quietly confident that her friendship is helping Tawne.
‘When we met, Tawne wore her hair in front of her face, like a wall against the world,’ she says.
‘But I saw her chatting to friends the other day and her hair was pushed back behind her ears, her face on show. I was so proud of her and knew things were improving.’
Not all the youngsters had complex emotional needs.
Kimberley, 13, just needed some attention. One of five children, her mum struggles to look after her brood, especially as Kimberley’s younger brother was born prematurely, weighing just 2lb, and has to use a wheelchair.
‘We’re a nice, normal, dysfunctional family,’ Kimberley joked in the programme, with a smile that hid the toughness of her life as a carer for her younger siblings.
But her partnership with Clive’s wife, 65- year- old Marina, has changed all that. After getting to know each other through the Old School project, the pair headed off to Oxford’s Natural History Museum for a day out.
‘I never get to go to places,’ says Kimberley. ‘I’m always in the house helping Mum or doing homework.
‘We can’t go out because there’s no one to look after my disabled brother. I’ve never been able to go out on my own with Mum.
‘So the attention from Marina means a lot to me. I feel really special because she listens to me and she’s not always on her phone or on Facebook. I feel more confident and it’s made me get up and do things — such as acting in drama class — rather than stay in the background.’
Marina says: ‘She’s a bright little girl with a wonderful sense of fun, who just wanted a friend and to have some time for herself.’
It’s such a simple idea you wonder why it hasn’t been tried before.
With so many children leading complex lives (just one of the 12 children in the experiment lives at home with both parents), who better to give the attention and guidance they need than older people with not only years of experience, but also the time to spend with them?
The older people gain so much, too. Following the three-month experiment, tests showed their movement and memories were better, as well as their ability to socialise.
Among the younger participants, those taking exams got higher grades than predicted.
On the psychological tests, Tawne’s self-esteem increased from a score of minus one before the experiment to 61 — twice the national average.
And Jacub’s ‘achievement’ score — merit points awarded for good work or behaviour — had soared from seven to 26.
Teachers say this has had a rippledown effect to other pupils and the Academy is now in the country’s top ten most improving schools.
No wonder they’ve been able to secure £65,000 in grants to continue the project and help roll it out across the country.
Jacub is the first to acknowledge its success.
‘ Before, I wouldn’t speak to people, but now I can go up to someone and say hello, which I’m proud of. My anger has calmed down and I’m not as hyper as I used to be.’
With that, the end-of-day school bell rings and he jumps up to go. But he’s not heading off home. Instead, he’s off to detention for being disruptive in class.
Oh well, no one ever said there wouldn’t be bumps in the road.
OLD School With The Hairy Bikers is on bbc.co.uk/iplayer
‘Someone listens to me — it makes me feel special’