Clumsy children ‘get lower marks’

Clumsy children ‘behind at school’

Clumsy children could be given extra support in the classroom after Yorkshire academics discovered a link between better eye-to-hand coordination and higher scores for reading, writing and maths.

Researchers from the University of Leeds studied more than 300 children at Lilycroft Primary School in Bradford.

CLUMSY CHILDREN could be given extra support in the classroom after Yorkshire academics discovered a link between better eye-to-hand coordination and higher scores for reading, writing and maths.

Researchers from the University of Leeds studied more than 300 children at Lilycroft Primary School in Bradford as part of the city’s pioneering Born in Bradford research project.

The findings were so definitive that the school has already remodelled parts of its buildings and grounds to help children to develop their motor skills and the ability to call on large muscle groups to co-ordinate movement.

The study, published today in the journal Psychological Science, saw the group of four to 11-yearolds take part in computer tasks to measure their co-ordination and interceptive timing – their ability to interact with a moving object.

The tasks, designed to measure eye-to-hand coordination, involved steering, tracking objects and hitting a moving object with an on-screen bat to see how the brain predicts the movement of objects through time and space.

The researchers suggest that this skill may have provided the evolutionary foundations for the emergence of cognitive abilities related to mathematics, a theory first proposed by the famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in the 1960s.

The results revealed that the children who did better at the eye-to-hand coordination tasks tended to have higher academic attainment in reading, writing and maths.

Those with the best performance at the steering task in particular were on average nine months ahead of classmates who struggled.

Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Leeds Mark Mon-Williams, who supervised the research, said: “The results show that eye-to-hand co-ordination and interceptive timing are robust predictors of how well young children will perform at school.

“The current thinking among psychologists is that the neural circuitry used to build up a child’s understanding of their external environment, the way they orientate themselves spatially and understand their world is also used to process numbers and more abstract thinking. It also raises the question: should schools be identifying those children who are seen as clumsy or not so well coordinated and giving them extra support?

“The study identifies the important relationship between a child’s ability to physically interact with their environment and their cognitive development.”

Lilycroft Primary School has now remodelled its reception, indoor and outdoor areas to include a space where children can develop their motor skills and the ability to call on large muscle groups to co-ordinate movement.

Headteacher Nicola Roth said the school would “harness” the research findings and encourage pupils to develop motor skill and eye-to-hand co-ordination.

She added: “Playing with construction equipment used to stop when children reached the ages of five or six but we have decided to continue with that until they are nine years old.

“This is one of the ways we have implemented the findings; it is a simple step that can have significant benefits for the children’s wider education.”

Playing with construction equipment used to stop at ages five or six. Lilycroft Primary School headteacher Nicola Roth.