Dubai: If your child is a poor performer at school, the first remedy should be to stack up a good collection of books at home, as an international assessment has established the link between book ownership and academic achievement.
Children in Dubai might be enjoying life's luxuries in surplus but not when it comes to books, with the majority of pupils having less than 25 books at home, well behind the international average.
TIMSS 2007 (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study), an international assessment of schoolchildren, has revealed that Dubai pupils have a lower level of book ownership than pupils across the globe — a fact that explains their poor performance against international benchmarks.
In TIMSS' assessment, Dubai's national average score of 461 in mathematics and 489 in science was below the global average of 500 in year four and eight.
The Educators Report by TIMSS that evaluates the achievement patterns of Dubai's pupils against others points out that pupils who come from homes with abundant literacy resources have higher achievements in maths, science and reading. For instance, at year eight, the TIMSS results point out an association between average mathematics achievement and the number of books at home. Internationally, 12 per cent of pupils reported having over 200 books at home and 12 per cent reported having 101 to 200 books. These pupils had an average of 486 and 480 score points, respectively. These averages were higher than the 464-point average of pupils with 26 to 100 books, and the 436-point average of pupils with 11 to 25 books. Pupils who have less than 10 books scored the least with a 413-point average.
In Dubai, the same pattern of book ownership and performance was seen at Year 4.
Lacking in resources
According to the TIMSS report, parents in Dubai stand guilty of not investing enough in educational resources as only 11 per cent of pupils reported more than 200 books at home, and 14 per cent between 101 and 200 books. These pupils achieved a score that was not significantly different to the TIMSS scale average. But the 17 per cent of pupils with very few books in the home achieved about 85 score points less than the TIMSS scale average.
Commenting on the findings, Russel Davies, principal of Deira International School, said the number of books at home does not necessarily indicate pupils' access to educational resources at home.
"Today many students are relying on internet for information. I am of the opinion that you may have thousands of books ... [but] they can remain useless if children are not encouraged to read..," he said.
How many books have you bought and never read? Do you think owning books is the first step towards greater academic achievements? If not, which is the best way to boost a child's academic performance?
