Memories Of Byron Avenue East Ham

A Memory of East Ham.

My late father, Don Lawes, grew up at no. 121 Byron Avenue on the Poets Estate in East Ham (off High Street North) during the '40s and '50s and attended East Ham Grammar School from 1938 to 1944. My late paternal grandmother, May Lawes, was a councillor on East Ham borough council (and mayor for a term) during that period. I remember the house was a typical East Ham terrace, with an outside toilet and a cellar, which I loved going down. Dad used to tell me how good East Ham Grammar School was, and how catastrophic the switch to comprehensive schools in the early '70s was to pupils' life chances (he used to call them "unemployment farms" - no kidding!). Was EHGS that good? And are the comprehensives that replaced it that bad? All I have to go on regarding Newham's schools today is the evidence of the NEWHAM RECORDER, which I read online most weeks. This weeks it gives a blaze of coverage about pupils from Newham 6th Form College getting places at top universities, including Oxford and Cambridge. So I am thinking that the situation isn't really isn't as bad today as Dad used to portray it. But his comments would have related to the '70s, when education was in crisis nationally - nowhere more so than at the grammar school that I attended in leafy Buckinghamshire back then. I have self-published a book about my school experience - CALLING IN THE CAVALRY, which is available from me on david.lawes2@hotmail.com, price £10. Although it focusses on Bucks, which won't be familiar to many Newham residents, there are lots of references to Newham's education because the then MP for Newham North-East, Reg Prentice (whom my grandmother knew) was then education secretary.