Reading to tots gives a head start

CHILDREN who are read to daily at the age of three are more than two months ahead of their classmates in literacy and maths by the age of five.

Reading is more important to a child's academic development than knowing the alphabet or how to count, a study by the Institute of Education, University of London suggests.

The researchers analysed the Foundation Stage Profile (FSP) results – including one-off tests on Scottish pupils – for more than 10,600 children taking part in the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS).

FSP is not usually used in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland but teachers did special assessments for the benefit of the MCS.

Researcher Dr Kirstine Hansen said children who were read to daily were two and a half months ahead of their classmates in their maths and communication, language and literacy score at the age of five.

She said: "The relationship between teaching the alphabet and counting is insignificant, but reading every day to a child has a positive effect on outcomes."

The study comes days after research by the Sutton Trust said Britain's poorest children are already almost a year behind richer classmates in their language skills by the time they start school.