Can we tell, at around age four, which children may struggle with schoolwork later? And does it matter who is doing the judging: a task, a parent or a teacher? This study set out to answer that.
The researchers followed 211 preschool children, with an average age of 4.34 years. Each child did game-like tasks that tested their "executive functions", the brain skills we use to hold information in mind, control impulses, and stay organised. Parents and teachers also filled in a questionnaire about the child's everyday behaviour. About four years later, 191 children were assessed in reading, writing, oral language, numbers, space and geometry, and science. The summary does not say which country the children lived in.
Teacher concerns lined up with weaker results across all six areas
Parents' and teachers' ratings of the same child agreed only modestly. When the researchers tested both together, teacher-reported difficulties were consistently linked to lower academic proficiency in all six areas. Parent reports still added some information on their own, but their link to later results became much weaker once teacher ratings were included.
The authors caution that this may partly reflect overlap: preschool teachers watch children in a school setting, and the later assessments were also school-based. So this does not prove teachers are simply better judges.
Tasks, parents and teachers each saw something different
The game-like tasks matched the questionnaires only weakly. A child who did well on a task was not necessarily rated as having few difficulties, and the reverse was also true. The researchers read this as a sign that the methods are complementary: each captures a different slice of how a child copes.
One task did stand out. Visuospatial working memory, which means holding pictures or locations in mind, was independently linked to later maths results, even after the ratings were taken into account.
What parents can take from this, and what we cannot say
This study shows links, not causes. It cannot tell us that any particular activity or teacher feedback changes a child's later results. It also does not tell us whether the pattern holds in Singapore or elsewhere in Asia, and it does not test any ways of helping children. The ratings are also only one picture of a child at one moment.
What it does support is that no single viewpoint tells the whole story, and that what teachers and parents each observe adds something.
- Ask your child's teacher how your child copes with classroom routines. Teacher-reported difficulties were the most consistent signal across all six later school areas.
- Share what you see at home with the teacher. Parent ratings added information beyond the tasks, so your view is a useful second piece of the picture.