How mothers speak has little impact on children’s school grades, study reveals
Posted on Thursday 23 July 2026
The study reveals that the everyday speech of mothers with children under five accounts for just three per cent of the learning gap between children in high and low income families.
Children from well-resourced families achieve higher school grades and qualifications, on average, than those from under-resourced family backgrounds. The Nuffield Foundation-funded study challenges the long-held assumption that home language habits are a primary factor in driving this gap.
Tracking twins
The researchers looked at data from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study. Tracking twins allows scientists to separate the traits a child inherits genetically from what they absorb from their environment.
By analysing 2.5 million words of natural conversation from mothers of children under five recorded during E-Risk, a collaborative team of UK experts found that women’s everyday speech does not differ that much between wealthy and disadvantaged families. While highly educated mothers do tend to use more sophisticated vocabulary, the researchers found no significant differences regarding grammar or the variety of words used.
The findings suggest that interventions aimed at mother’s speech are likely to deliver only small benefits for children’s educational achievement. Wider structural forces like household income and family socioeconomic status exert a far more pervasive influence on educational success.
Structural inequality
Lead author Professor Sophie von Stumm, from the Department of Education at the University of York, said: “Encouraging parents to speak to and engage with their children is always excellent, but that alone cannot close the education gap. Focusing narrowly on speech in families feeds a parent-causal narrative that blames mothers and distracts from structural inequality.
“One effective way to reduce disadvantage would be to increase funding and support for schools. Programmes like Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) are effective in closing gaps when children first start school, but a single year of extra help cannot permanently fix systemic inequality. Pupils facing disadvantage need consistent support all the way through their education.”
Genetic influences
The York-led study is the first of its kind to account for genetic influences, ensuring the results reflected the true environmental impact of a mother's speech.
Professor von Stumm added: “Previous research in this area has failed to take into account that children are genetically related to their parents. This study cements the fact genetics is a major factor in linking a mother's education to her child's educational success."
Further research
While the study tracked mothers’ general speech patterns, more research is needed to determine if analysing direct mother-to-child speech would yield different results.
Professor von Stumm said: “It is possible that the way mothers speak directly to children under five has a stronger influence on their education than how they speak in general. However, this difference would likely disappear once we control for genetics. To date, ours is the only longitudinal study to look at mothers' speech in a large sample and follow children until adulthood.”
The collaborative project brought together expertise from the University of York, King's College London, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Northampton.
