Less sports and culture lowers children’s test scores

An estimated 146,000 Dutch children are “underadvised” regarding the level of secondary education they’re capable of because they have limited access to cultural activities. The same goes for 71,000 children who cannot participate sufficiently in sports. These hard numbers are the outcome of ABN AMRO calculations performed on recent research by independent economics research agency SEO, exploring the effects of the opportunity gap on Dutch primary school pupils.

Access to resources

The SEO research team approached this from various angles, including the resources that children have access to. For example, being able to participate in organised sports or visit museums on a regular basis. These factors prove to have a correlation with learning achievements: pupils with less access to such developmental resources score an average 1.5 points lower on their aptitude test (CITO test). Enough to determine, for instance, if a child is advised to follow vocational or general secondary education.

“These figures clearly show how lack of access to sports and culture impacts not only an individual child’s development, but potentially also the pool of talent available in tomorrow’s job market,” says Ward van der Stee, ABN AMRO sector analyst. “In our ageing society, with labour shortages on the horizon, we will be needing employees in the decades ahead who can perform well in a variety of roles and stay flexible. To develop this kind of flexibility, being exposed from an early age to a wide range of sports and cultural activities is essential.”

Participation in sports and culture steadily declining

Figures published by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reveal that weekly participation in sports activities among children aged 4 to 11 has declined in recent years. Likewise, primary schools organise fewer and fewer cultural activities like visits to museums, another factor hampering children’s development opportunities.

Long-term job market impacts

Van der Stee warns of the long-term job market impacts of this declining participation in sports and culture activities. “Reduced access to sports and culture impacts not only a child’s development, but also their future job opportunities. That’s something we need to watch out for.”

Fair start

Because structural participation in sports and cultural activities is good for children’s and youngsters’ physical, mental, social and creative development, ABN AMRO Foundation has for many years been organising a range of such activities. Their aim is to introduce children from financially challenged families to sports and culture. ABN AMRO believes that every child deserves the opportunity to develop their potential, and is therefore is committed to facilitating a fair start for all children, including those who cannot count on one.

The figures explained

Of the 1.4 million primary school pupils in the Netherlands, 63 per cent participate in organised sports activities, while only 26 per cent regularly visit a museum, and 20 per cent the theatre. This means that 518,000 of these primary school pupils have no access to organised sports, 1 million of them don’t visit museums and 1.12 million don’t go to the theatre. SEO’s research shows that on average, children who participate in organised sports score 1.5 points higher in their CITO test. Children with access to museums and theatres score 1.4 points higher on average.

Consequently, many of the 518,000 pupils who do not participate in organised sports are advised to follow a lower level of secondary education than they are potentially capable of. Looking at the distribution and the average CITO score in the Netherlands (534.9 points), and at the minimum score for higher general education (536 points), around 71,000 pupils are not advised to follow higher general education as a consequence of non-participation in sports activities, which lowers their score by 1.5 points. Of the 1 million pupils without access to cultural resources, an estimated 146,000 is underadvised due to their 1.4-point lower CITO score.