New research has found a correlation between continued participation in sports, whether on teams or individually, and improved academic performance. The article, signed by researchers at the universities of Sydney and Manchester and titled Sport Participation for Academic Success: Evidence From the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, was published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health in December.
Specifically, researchers aimed to identify long-term patterns of sport participation from childhood into adolescence and to assess the link between these patterns and academic achievement. Continued sports participation was associated with lower odds of absence from school, greater attention and better working memory, higher numeracy and literacy scores, higher end-of-school academic performance, and higher odds of university study. Parents and caretakers were asked whether their child had participated in sports regularly, either in school or out of school, over the previous 12 months. “Regularly” meant at least once a week for three months or more.
Researchers tracked the sports participation of a nationally representative sample of 4,241 children between the ages of 4 and 13 and then assessed the association between sports participation and academic progress up to the age of 21.
