‘I essentially taught myself GCSEs’: the enduring impact of missing school during Covid

Lana Collie-James was 14 when she began two years at home to protect her clinically vulnerable mother

Lana Collie-James was 14 years old in the midst of the Covid pandemic when she was offered a stark choice: her education or her mother's life. My mum's clinically vulnerable. She has a compromised immune system, along with a plethora of other illnesses that would make Covid hit very hard," she says.

It meant when schools reopened to pupils after the initial closures, the single mother and her daughter living together in Bournemouth faced a wrenching decision.