The amount of time parents spend with their children contributes much less to their progress in school than the family’s social class, new Manchester 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.
However, having parents with degrees, or who were well-off or from a high socio-economic class approximately doubled the chance of their children being assessed as above average.
“The effect of various parenting activities is much less significant than parents’ class, income and educational level,” Ms Ding told the British Sociological Association’s annual conference in Manchester this week.
“Family income has a greater impact on children’s performance in core subjects than in creative subjects.
“The relative insignificance of parenting activities in these models may be due to the fact that high frequency of parenting activities does not necessarily equate to high quality parenting.
“The method and quality of parenting may be crucial. For example, parents from different social classes may all read to their children, but the selection of reading materials and the explanation that comes with reading may differ.
