bengaluru children who play games every day and those with siblings score better in mathematics but watching television ruins their scores ncert national achievement survey has revealed while having more siblings did little to improve childrens reading skills it did improve math marks if those with over four siblings scored an average of 329 grades fell for children with just one sibling the survey also found that access to more books at home improved reading ability children with 25 or more books scored 508 while children with no books at home scored 426 but books did little for children to score more in math a mere 25 improvement while children who read more did marginally well in science and social science pointed out s anand chief data scientist at gramener a data visualization and analytics company which analyzed the data for ncert the survey measured childrens learning achievement in language mathematics science and social science it analyzed data collected from 6722 schools government and government aided 24486 teachers and 188647 students through tests and questionnaires from 33 states and union territories the objective was to understand what children in schools know and can do at different stages of elementary education of all the demographic or behavioural factors parents education and occupation influences students marks the most the impact reduces with the number of siblings perhaps because children are learning from their elder siblings instead girls marks are more influenced by the mothers education level while boys marks are influenced by the fathers education level perhaps because mothers teach girls and fathers teach boys at least in class 8 however when it comes to mathematics its the fathers education level that matters perhaps because fathers more often teach math to all their children interestingly private tuitions have a low impact on overall performance the best that can be said for them is they dont lower marks children of illiterate parents for example actually find their marks dropping a bit when they go for private tuitions however this may not be true for all segments