Learning Resources

Why a little learning over the holidays helps

Teachers have long noticed what researchers call the "summer slide" - the tendency for children to lose some of the academic progress they made during the school year over a long break, particularly in maths. It isn't about filling the holidays with schoolwork; a small amount of practice, spread out and low-pressure, appears to be enough to make a real difference.

A short worksheet here and there, rather than daily lessons, can help your child start the new term more confident rather than needing to re-learn what they'd already grasped. It's also a genuinely easy way to swap in twenty minutes of low-pressure practice for twenty minutes of screen time, without turning the summer into term time.

You can read more about the research behind this on BBC Newsround.