#MUSIC MATH SCORES HIGHER FULL#
We say one year ahead because the math, science and English grades that music-engaged students obtained in Grade 10 could place them a full year ahead in their curricular studies. Students in the present study who were highly engaged in instrumental music were, on average, over one year ahead in their math, English and science skills, compared to those peers not engaged in school music. (Shutterstock)Īlso, several earlier studies have been based on small, unrepresentative samples or considered only brief exposure to music training - whereas a central claim substantiated by our study underscores the academic achievement benefits from sustained engagement in music training over several years. Many other studies have examined music participation but they didn’t take into account different types of music making such as instrumental music, vocal music, or other forms and amounts of engagement. Sustained engagementĪ handful of experiments have found that students randomly assigned to music training outperform those assigned to non-music groups.īut music is an inherently complex phenomenon - there are many ways to make and engage with music. While we are not yet able to infer causality - that music causes students to be smarter or improve their grades - we were able to identify a predictive relationship between music achievement and academic achievement, and demonstrate that more music engagement can be better for overall learning. We did this to demonstrate that these factors were not key determinants in musical or academic achievement and to address the problem of what researchers call confounding - unaccounted-for factors that might lead to incorrect findings. We used a statistical regression model and adjusted our analyses to control for those four factors. Foundation Skills Assessment Grade 7 examination gender socioeconomic background (as gauged by the student’s home neighbourhood) linguistic diversity, captured by language spoken in the home. We found that this is true, even when we take into account the following four factors: children’s prior elementary school educational achievement in numeracy and literacy, as captured by the B.C. We expected instrumental music would have a more pronounced positive impact than vocal music. In our study, we counted both the number of high school courses taken, as well as student high school involvement and grades in graduation program music courses (concert band, jazz band, orchestra, piano and choir) taken across public high school years (Grades 8-12).īased on previous research we inferred that music involvement that continued up to Grade 12 would be associated with (and predict) higher high school grades in mathematics, science and English. We looked at scores from provincial testing from Grade 10 math, science and English as well as Grade 12 English in relationship to students’ participation in music. public school students for several cohorts, we had an unprecedented opportunity to examine how student participation in music and music achievement predicted and related to provincial examination scores in high school English, math and science subjects. Thanks to rich educational and socio-economic data capturing the full population of B.C.
Music matters for its own sake, but also because, as our study shows, music engagement sustained from childhood into adolescence – particularly instrumental music that begins in elementary school – is significantly related to better high school achievement. Also, music achievement predicts academic achievement in math, science and English. We learned that students involved in extended music engagement (between grades 8 - 12) do one full year better academically than non-music peers, particularly when engaged in instrumental music sustained over years of schooling.
My colleagues and I at the University of British Columbia studied over 110,000 public school students. What does maturing mean after elementary school? Here’s one thing it shouldn’t mean: dropping music at school.
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