Parental help with schoolwork does little for children’s academic progress

The amount of time parents spend with their children contributes much less to their progress in school than the family's social class, new research has shown. The study found that the time parents spent helping children with maths, art and music had almost no effect on their school progress as rated by teachers. Instead, family class and income, and the parents' educational level, were much more important. The University of Manchester's Lin Ding analysed data from the Millennium Cohort Study survey of over 8,000 children in the UK at the ages of seven and 11, recording their teachers' assessment of their progress in maths and in creative subjects, and the amount of time parents spent with them on various activities. Ms Ding found that parents' time spent helping their children with maths, reading to them and going to libraries made children only a few percentage points more likely to be classed as above average or well above average by teachers. Going to bed at a regular time also helped the children slightly. Parents' time spent on musical or physical activities with children had no effect, she found.