New research suggests extra activities and help with homework have little effect

The research from Manchester University believes that helping children with their maths or reading to them outside school has hardly any impact at all. More categorically, it finds that playing music or sports with your children does nothing for their performance at school.

The research has divided opinion, the director of policy at school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “Parents play an absolutely crucial role in their child’s education. We would strongly encourage all parents to engage with their child’s school in terms of how best to support their child’s learning.”

In the Guardian, Lee Elliot Major, Professor of Social Mobility, based at Exeter University argues that “As with many such studies, it is answering the wrong exam question.”

He goes on to say:

“A parent’s own circumstances have a profound impact on children’s prospects. Children with non-graduate parents are far less likely to grow up in two-parent homes and family-owned homes than children with graduate parents. Children of the richest households, meanwhile, are twice as likely to benefit from private tutoring than children from the poorest households.

In my research, I have found that simple habits in the home can make life-defining differences. Sitting down with a book with a child each day just for 20 minutes, for example, can transform their learning. Regular routines (meal, bath, bedtime) matter, as well as making children school-ready (ensuring they get enough food and sleep to learn). If you want to help your children with their revision, then quiz them: it’s the most effective technique for remembering things.

Arts and sports also have huge educational value in themselves. They help to improve confidence, self-esteem and wellbeing, as well as social and leadership skills. It’s paramount that parents promote them, given an increasingly emaciated school curriculum is squeezing out music, art and sport. In my view, children should devote as much time to art and sport as core academic study.”

Read the full article in the Guardian.