Considerable research, including results from TIMSS and PIRLS, has documented the importance of early childhood learning activities for fostering student achievement during later school years. The Early Literacy and Numeracy Activities scale focuses specifically on literacy and numeracy activities, summarizing parents’ reports about how often they engaged with their child in nine literacy activities and nine numeracy activities before their child began primary school (see About the Scale in Exhibit 5.11).

Exhibit 5.12 presents the percentage of students whose parents reported “often,” “sometimes,” and “never or almost never” engaging them in early literacy and numeracy activities, together with average fourth grade mathematics achievement. Countries are ordered by the percentage of students whose parents “often” engaged them in early literacy and numeracy activities. In general, parents reported a good deal of early interaction with their children, with 42 percent of the students having parents who “often” engaged them in such activities and an additional 55 percent with parents who “sometimes” engaged them, on average. Just 3 percent of students had parents who reported “never or almost never” engaging them in early literacy or numeracy activities.

There was a modest positive relationship between the frequency of engagement reported and later mathematics achievement, with the students in the “often” category having higher average achievement than students in the “sometimes” category (516 vs. 495, respectively). In several countries, a small percentage of students (3%, on average) had parents who “never or almost never” engaged them in early literacy and numeracy activities, and these students typically had lower average mathematics achievement (456).

Exhibit 5.13 shows the same student percentages for the Early Literacy and Numeracy Activities scale as Exhibit 5.12, but this time together with average fourth grade science achievement. The activities-science achievement relationship was similar to the activities-mathematics achievement relationship, with highest achievement for those whose parents “often” engaged them (507), next for those who were “sometimes” engaged (484), and lowest for those who were “never or almost never” engaged (421).