IOE researchers find that:
"Reading to the child every day and having a mother who thinks it is important to stimulate young children are positively associated with all cognitive outcomes and negatively with problem behaviour."
Children who were read to daily did better in the naming vocabulary cognitive test, which involved the children being shown a picture and asked to identify the object.
They also performed better in the foundation stage profiles and had higher behaviour scores.
Youngsters whose mothers thought it was important to talk to them and teach them the alphabet also did better than their peers in tests where children were shown a picture of an object and asked to identify a similar object among a number of other pictures, and when asked to reproduce patterns using coloured blocks.
These children also had better foundation stage profiles, whereas children who watch three or more hours of TV a day, on average, achieved lower scores on the tests
If programmes to encourage family literacy catch on with the working class, that will be good. But I wonder: will it mean that the children of the worst parents will be that much further behind? That is, could the most disadvantaged 5% find themselves even more polarised?
This would be an interesting question to pursue. How would I do it?
