A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Children who are breastfed are twice as likely to do well in their GCSEs as those who aren’t, proclaimed Times Radio this week. Which is great to know – but aren’t they a bit old not to have moved onto solids by then?

And what happens if they require sustenance in the middle of their English test? Is there a roomful of Mammies primed for action – or are there fridges full of expressed milk in an adjoining canteen?

There are no statistics, on the other hand, for exam students who are spoon-fed, but then that figure might be hard to quantify given the amount of rote learning that dominates the education landscape.

The GCSEs kind of fall between our Junior Cert and Leaving Cert, both in terms of age and challenge – and by the time that the A levels come round, the number of subjects on the curriculum is more like what a first year college student would expect here.

Which only reinforces the belief that – in terms of the number of subjects for a start – there is nothing to match the standard of the Leaving Cert. Whether you’re breast or spoon-fed.

That said, the contrast between those babies on the bottle and those fed in the natural way was stark, with Oxford University researchers examining data from almost 5,000 pupils in England born between 2000 and 2002.

One third of them had never been breastfed, with the rest breastfed for different periods, with one in ten breastfed for at least twelve months.

Only ten per cent of the non-breastfed group achieved an A+ or A in their English GCSEs. This increased to 23 per cent of those breastfed for between four and twelve months, and 29 per cent in children breastfed for more than a year.

Similarly, the numbers achieving A+ or A in maths GCSEs increased from eleven per cent in those never breastfed to 24 per cent in those breastfed for four to six months, 30 per cent for six to twelve months and 31 per cent in those breastfed for longer.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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