HAVING an older brother or sister who does well at school has a
knock-on effect that means their siblings perform even better, a study has
found.
Academics tracking the progress of 220,000 children over four
years concluded that for each extra grade achieved by an eldest child, the
results of their younger brothers or sisters nudge higher by a small but
discernible margin.
The
“sibling spill-over effect” suggests that families such as the Dimbleby dynasty,
in which the BBC broadcaster, David Dimbleby is better known than his younger
brother and fellow journalist Jonathan, may be atypical. Instead, the Miliband
family, in which Ed eclipsed his elder brother David to seize the leadership of
the Labour party almost five years ago, may better illustrate the phenomenon in
which younger siblings gain from watching and learning from the eldest
child.
In
the sporting world the same may apply to the Murrays, of whom, under the
unstinting encouragement of their mother Judy, the former Wimbledon champion
Andy has been more successful than his older brother Jamie, who specialises in
doubles tennis.
The
study, by Cheti Nicoletti and Birgitta Rabe of the Institute for Social and
Economic Research at the University of Essex, is the first to investigate the
“multiplier effect” on younger siblings of the academic prowess of the eldest
child.
The
findings have significant implications for school policy, particularly for the
coalition’s pupil premium, under which schools are allocated an extra £1,300 for
each poor child in primary school and £935 in secondary school. This was because
the effect was especially marked in poorer families.
Researchers found that the knock-on effect was most likely when
the eldest child helped a younger sibling with homework, when younger brothers
or sisters sought to copy their older sibling, when the eldest child shared
information about school within the family or even when a younger brother or
sister tried to rebel and consciously to follow a different
path.
For
every extra exam grade achieved by the elder sibling, such as moving from a B to
an A grade, the younger brother or sister’s marks increased on average by 4 per
cent. This is equivalent to spending an additional £670 per children in school,
the study concluded.
There was no corresponding or reverse spill-over in which high
achievement by younger siblings had a beneficial impact on the school results of
the eldest child, which the academics said was to be expected.
“An
increase in the test scores of an older sibling of one standard deviation leads
to an increase in the corresponding test score of the younger sibling of 2.4 per
cent of a standard deviation,” the authors of the study said.
“The
spill-over effect is two to four times larger in families where we assume that
knowledge on education and school-specific factors is low and hence the value of
information-sharing between siblings higher.”
The
authors added that the findings indicated that spending extra money on
supporting children from families with low earnings, living in poor
neighbourhoods or who spoke English as a second language could have double the
benefit because of the multiplier effect.
By Greg Hurst
With thanks to The Australian
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