Professor Pat Thomson, CLA’s Senior Evidence Associate, reports on a new study of the benefits of enhanced sport and music provision during primary and secondary education, finding that it chimes with our own Rapid Evidence Review of Music Education. She also identifies the need for further research.
Baxter, H., & Welch, G. F. (2026). The benefits of enhanced music and sport provision: A report for the Neville Abraham Foundation on children’s development during their primary and secondary school years. UCL Institute of Education.
This report, commissioned by the Neville Abraham Foundation and produced by researchers at UCL Institute of Education, aims to establish what the evidence says about extra-curricular music and sport, and what that evidence means for schools trying to design better provision. It is a systematic review, not a new study of children in England.
What the researchers did
The review is based on English-language literature published between 1995 and November 2025. The researchers’ initial search returned 1,868 references. After screening, 133 studies were judged eligible for the review.
Sport dominates this evidence base. All 133 studies mention sport or music, but far more of them report on sport specifically than on music, and only a fraction look at arts activity in general. Most studies (103 of 133) focus on secondary-age pupils. There are only 15 primary-only studies.
What the studies found
The review organises findings into eight themes: academic attainment, inclusion and equity, mental health and wellbeing, social belonging, motivation and engagement, leadership and communication skills, physical health, and behaviour and risk (including attendance and dropping out).
Academic attainment is the most studied theme by far, appearing in 82 of the 133 studies, and the pattern across them is a positive but generally indirect association: participation tends to work through increased engagement, attendance, or motivation, rather than acting directly on grades. A small number of studies found no effect, and a smaller number found that overscheduling erodes the benefits.
Three studies are noteworthy for arts educators. A Finnish study (Metsäpelto and Pulkkinen, 2012) found that two to three years of participation in extra-curricular arts and crafts or music was linked to higher academic attainment and better adaptive behaviour, while sport showed no such association in that sample. A Japanese study (Ishiguro et al., 2023) found that pupils in music or visual arts clubs outperformed peers academically. And a large English longitudinal study (Robinson, 2024) found pupils who attended arts and music clubs in Years 9 and 10 were 56% more likely to progress to higher education by age 21 to 22, a stronger association than the one found for sports clubs and employment.
The picture is more contested when it comes to equity. Some studies report that extra-curricular participation narrows gaps for disadvantaged pupils. Others, including a German study using national panel data (Bering and Schulz, 2024), found that combined participation benefited children from more educated families more than others, meaning the extra-curricular activities widened rather than closed the skill gap, even where music offered similar benefits across social groups. The reviewers suggest that access remains uneven, shaped by cost, gender, transport, and school type, and that school-based, low-cost, staff-run provision reduces these barriers more reliably than external or fee-based programmes.
Nine principles for provision design
The report uses the literature to develop nine features of high-quality extra-curricular provision: regular structured delivery, deliberate attention to social bonds, skilled and well-supported facilitators, inclusive design that removes practical barriers, an explicit link between the activity and wider skills, attention to what different activity types offer, sustained multi-year participation, genuine student autonomy, and family or community partnership.
Using the review
Arts organisations may find that the individual-study evidence is useful making the case for extra-curricular music provision. But this is a research base built mostly on sport, mostly on secondary pupils, with music-specific and primary-specific findings a minority. It is really important to cite the music studies specifically rather than the overall findings, as these are mainly about sport. However, it is reassuring to see that the results of this more restrictive review of only extra-curricular music provision do chime with the CLA/RSC Rapid Evidence Review of Music Education, giving us confidence to use both for planning and advocacy. The review also suggests the need for further arts-specific research on extra-curricular provision, at scale.
References
Bering, H., & Schulz, W. (2024). Can sports and music level the playing field? Adolescents’ extracurricular activities and the reproduction of social inequalities in cognitive skills. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 90, 100895. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2024.100895
Ishiguro, C., Ishihara, T., & Morita, N. (2023). Extracurricular music and visual arts activities are related to academic performance improvement in school-aged children. NPJ Science of Learning, 8(1), 7–10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-023-00155-0
Metsäpelto, R.-L., & Pulkkinen, L. (2012). Socioemotional behavior and school achievement in relation to extracurricular activity participation in middle childhood. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 56(2), 167–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2011.581681
Robinson, D. (2024). Access to extra-curricular provision and the association with outcomes. Education Policy Institute. https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/access-to-extra-curricular-provision-and-the-association-with-outcomes/
