By Tim Wigmore
Sport or study? It is a perennial debate – and a false one. Rather than playing more sport being the enemy of a child’s performance in the classroom, more physical activity helps children enjoy better academic results. Games and grades are mutually enhancing.
A major study by University College London’s Institute of Education showed how much sport benefits children in the classroom. Children who regularly played sport aged five, seven and 11 were almost 1.5 times more likely to reach a higher than expected level in their Key Stage 2 (a British national assessment) maths test.
Playing sport regularly primes children for better learning, improving oxygen flow to the brain as well as focus. Credit: iStock
Whatever a child’s sporting ability, more active children tend to perform better in class.
Regular physical activity is associated with an extra two months of academic progress over a school year, a series of studies of primary and secondary pupils alike demonstrated. Researchers in Canada, Germany, the United States and beyond have uncovered similar findings.
Active children perform better in class
“Sport isn’t just an add-on to education, it is education,” says Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter. “The idea that sport and academic success compete is completely misguided.
“It is crucial that all our students leave school with basics in literacy and numeracy. But this will only happen if we recognise and celebrate the wide range of human talents in our schools – practical, artistic, sporting, as well as academic.”
For children floundering in school, sport can be the catalyst to improve their results too.
Underachieving young people who participate in extracurricular activities linked to organised sport were shown to improve their independent study skills by about 15 per cent, said UCL associate professor Karen Schucan Bird.
She also found that underachieving young people who participate in extracurricular activities linked to sport improved their numeracy skills by 29 per cent compared with those who did not participate. Sports participation can develop self-esteem and social competence, which then translate into the classroom, Schucan Bird says.
Better brains, better future employees
Perhaps most remarkable is how sport benefits the brain. Regular physical activity increases the flow of oxygen to the brain, making children better-equipped to learn.
Greater levels of activity and fitness are linked to positive changes in brain structure and capability, says Professor Craig Williams of the University of Exeter. “Both fitness and activity seem to have an effect in improving cognitive function and classroom behaviour like attention, on-task behaviour and executive function.”
By boosting fitness and stamina, sport can give children more energy, sharpening their focus when they return to class.
Sport develops broader character traits too. Physical activity helps children to develop self-confidence, resilience and learn the discipline of turning up and performing to their best ability, said Dr Emily Tanner, lead investigator of the UCL study.
“Sport helps to foster the essential employment skills valued in the workplace,” Tanner says.
Last year, the Education Policy Institute found that attending extracurricular clubs at secondary school is associated with a range of positive outcomes – such as progressing to higher education and being in employment – when young people become adults.
The Nuffield Foundation found that more active children aged 11 had higher educational attainment and better social, emotional and behavioural outcomes than less active pupils.
Antidote to smartphones
Ubiquitous smartphones and social media have made sport even more essential. Seventy per cent of parents are concerned that their children are spending less time being active due to digital distractions. Sport, like academic excellence, depends on being present and immersed in the moment, rather than digital distractions.
Parents and teachers alike are concerned about the time children spend on phones and the impact it has on learning.Credit: iStock
“Sport is one of the most powerful antidotes to the digital world our children inhabit,” Elliot Major observes. “Physical activity helps reset the brain, reduce anxiety. Team sport provides human interaction, belonging and shared purpose – the very things that social media so often takes away from children’s lives.”
The upshot is simple: inactive children are not given the best chance of succeeding at school. For children to fulfil their potential in the classroom, they need to have enough time doing sport too. This implication has particular consequences for the educational cause beloved of the Left and Right alike: social mobility.
Disadvantaged children who attend after-school sports clubs perform significantly better than their peers who do not attend these clubs. The UCL study found that disadvantaged children achieve, on average, a two-point higher total score in their KS2 assessments in English, maths and science at the end of primary school. The improvement equates to nearly half of the overall attainment gap between poorer and more advantaged children.
Most children missing physical activity targets
For millions of children, however, the school curriculum fails to offer a holistic education, in which regular physical activity enriches a child’s experience of learning.
Rather than a tool to increase social mobility, too often sport – and the unequal access to games – exacerbates other inequalities. Just 39 per cent of disadvantaged children do an average of 60 minutes or more of sport and physical activity a day.
American writer George Plimpton famously captured the essence of playing games. “The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself – the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent – all of them savouring a moment before committing themselves to action,” he wrote.
Children need this feeling more than ever. Rather than in conflict with each other, sport and academia are better viewed as allies against a common foe: smartphones.
The Telegraph, London
Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.