PUSHY PARENTS who overload their children with after-school activities may not be helping them as much as they believe, according to the latest findings from the Growing Up in Irelandstudy.
The national longitudinal study found that children who did cultural activities such as music, drama and dance, and read for pleasure were likely to score well on reading and maths tests. However, being involved in too many activities cancelled out some of the educational benefits.
At the other end of the spectrum, children who spent most of their spare time in unstructured activities such as watching television fared worst in the tests.
Growing Up in Ireland – Influences on 9-Year-Olds' Learning: Home, School and Communityinvolved interviews with 8,568 nine-year-old children, as well as interviews with their parents, teachers and principals, in 2007/2008.
The researchers found that children divided into five groups. The cultural activities group accounted for 25 per cent of children and included those who did after-school activities such as music, drama and dance, and read for pleasure.
The sports and computer games group accounted for 20 per cent of those surveyed, while the social networkers group (18 per cent) identified children who used computers a lot.
The busy lives group (15 per cent) included children who did a very wide range of after-school activities. The final group, the television and sports group (23 per cent) identified children who spent spare time watching television and doing things that were not structured. They seldom used computers.
Not surprisingly, it found that boys were more likely to fall into the sports and computer games group while girls were more likely to be in the cultural activities group.
Children from privileged backgrounds tended to be involved in social networking and cultural activities and were also more likely to fall into the “busy lives” group.
Those who took part in cultural activities and social networking had higher levels of reading and maths performance than other groups. But, taking account of social background, there was no difference between the performance of the “busy lives” group and the group of children who spent most of their time watching television and playing sports.
The “hurried child” phenomenon was highlighted by Dr Emer Smyth who co-authored the report with Dr Selina McCoy and Amanda Quail. Dr Smyth said these busy children were spread very thinly across so many areas in their spare time that they were not feeling the academic benefit. Literacy, in particular, was being squeezed out, and also maths to a lesser extent.
She also highlighted the fact that Gaelscoileanna students were more likely to be involved in cultural activities and less likely to spend their spare time watching television.
She said schools in Gaeltacht areas did not have the same profile, which seemed to suggest that it was not connected with the Irish language culture.
The study also found that children from immigrant families were more likely to fall into the social networker category while children with learning disabilities were most likely to fit into the television and sports group.
Urban children were more likely to be social networkers than rural children, while children in one-parent families tended to fall into the television and sports group.
The children interviewed for this study are now 13 years old, and are taking part in follow-up interviews as part of the national study.
