Kids benefit from out-of-school activities

EXTRACURRICULAR activities are good for children but questions remain about which ones are the most efficacious and why, information that would help governments and other funding bodies work out the best way to direct resources.

EXTRACURRICULAR activities are good for children but questions remain about which ones are the most efficacious and why, information that would help governments and other funding bodies work out the best way to direct resources.

Bonnie Barber has completed three years of research on the subject with a group of 1800 West Australian school students and recently secured Australian Research Council Discovery Grant funding of $340,000 for a further three, another step in her bid to make it a truly longitudinal study.

"We want to look at the difference between sport and other things," Murdoch University's Professor Barber says, by way of example. Barber and a colleague in the US conducted a similar survey for 20 years with 1200 students in Michigan.

"According to the US study we did, sport is linked to a lot of good outcomes, such as that students involved in sport complete more years of university education and gain jobs with more autonomy when they are young adults. But there is also a dark side in that they drink more alcohol. Activities that are non-sporting seem linked to lower levels of drinking.

"In both the US and Australia, drinking is associated with sport, and in Australia this is even more pronounced in regional schools. We also think it may be the age of peers: the more elite you are as a sportsman the more likely you are to hang around in mixed-age peer groups, and that seems to matter. We don't know but we are going to find out."

Barber and her team have been conducting annual surveys with two cohorts, those who began participating in year 8, and those who began in year 10. The latter finished school last year, so the next three-year study will follow them into their post-school years.

"The second three years are to see if there are longer term benefits." It should provide some indication of whether they sustain their interest and commitment.

One question is whether students participate in activities because they are already the well-socialised children of parents who are inclined to invest in such things, orwhether the social development is directly attributable to the activities.

An emerging factor -- and possibly a partial answer -- is that students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds seem to gain a lot of benefit from extracurricular activities.

"Those from disadvantaged backgrounds who are involved in activities will do much better in terms of wellbeing than if they don't do activities," Barber says.

"Sport could be a place where you get to do things you otherwise don't get to do in your less advantaged life. Kids from less advantaged schools are less likely to participate, but those who do, look really good."

Students in regional schools "do a fair bit of sport, but not much non-sport. I don't want to be seen as someone who says all kids should do sport. They need a range of activities: some kids are not . . . drawn to sport, they need a choice, such as debating or choir. It is the combination of sport and non-sport activity that predicts student wellbeing overall."