Does listening to music make you better at maths?

School classwork is done in silence, but homework is often done listening to music.

Certainly, when I was younger I always preferred doing maths exercises with the radio or the record player on.

Now when I play around with puzzles, or doodle mathematical thoughts, or do my tax returns I always have iTunes or Spotify providing a soundtrack.

I find it comforting, and I sense that background music somehow stimulates mathematical creativity and the ease of processing numbers – I’m not sure how, but it feels that way.

(Using words is different. I can’t write with music on. At all.)

Which is why I wasn’t surprised by recent research claiming that listening to music can dramatically improve children’s maths scores.

When I tweeted about this story last month, a maths teacher at a comprehensive school in north Wales got in touch to tell me that she plays CDs during her lessons.

Kathryn plays classical chill out music during her maths classes as a way of keeping the pupils focussed.

I’d never heard of this before – and assumed it would not be allowed – but Kathryn’s methods have even been praised by a school inspector as a good way to keep kids calm.

“With teenagers today being always plugged into music, to expect a silent classroom is bonkers,” she said. “To fill the silence with music is better than it being filled with chatter and gossip. I really do find that music keeps them on task and once they get used to it they will ask for it to go on if I have forgotten to turn it on.”

She said she doesn’t know if the music has improved results, but she added:

“I do know that it has improved the atmosphere especially in some of my more challenging classes.

Kathryn doesn’t have the music on when she is talking to the class, but she switches the CD player on for exercise work: “not very loud but loud enough for everyone to hear easily.”

Music is off for class assessments, however, as a way of preparing the students for external exams, in which music is forbidden.

Kathryn first played music during a maths lesson 14 years ago as a Friday afternoon treat to a class of 34 stuck in a room for 30.

“I found this kept them far calmer than usual. The pupils would behave all week so that they could listen on a Friday.”

At first she played commercial radio, but after reading about the Mozart effect – the hypothesis that listening to Mozart makes you smarter – she switched to classical.

I wondered if music helped certain areas of maths better than others?

“I haven’t found anything that doesn’t work well with music in the background, although there are some types of music that don’t work well with the students,” she replied. “They don’t mind most classical but opera is a no-no, as they don’t like it so they find it distracting. Also anything with words can be distracting as they will try to sing along.

“As a treat now and again I put more current music on. The younger ones like the Glee CDs, the older ones some Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Foo Fighters. The main CDs I play are relaxing classical album or chill-out classics.  I think also the more challenging the topic the more music in the background keeps them on task, as they are less inclined to give up and start talking.”

In a culture where maths lessons are seen so negatively, maybe introducing music is a way to make children enjoy maths more – and, if the research is correct, it might even make them better mathematicians.