Music Lessons and Math Skills: Does Learning an Instrument Boost Grades?

By ABC Academy of Music teaching team · Updated August 2026

“Music makes kids better at math.” Parents ask us about this claim a lot, and it shows up everywhere online. We wanted to know what the actual research says, not just the headlines. The honest answer is more useful than the slogan. Some strong evidence backs a real link. Some solid research found no benefit at all, or even the opposite. This article covers both sides. See our companion pieces on music lessons and school performance and music and child brain development for the wider picture, and our full Music Education Research hub for every study behind our program.

The Big Picture: A 2023 Review of 50 Years of Research

The largest study on this exact question is a 2023 meta-analysis. It pooled 245 separate studies, covering nearly 78,000 students from kindergarten through university, spanning research from 1975 to 2022. The researcher sorted studies into three types of music activity: learning an instrument on its own, a standard music class, and lessons where music and math were taught together in the same activity.

All three types linked to better math results than no music at all. The clearest gains came from lessons that combined music and math directly, in the same activity. Instrument lessons alone still linked to a real, moderate improvement. Some news coverage of this study reported it as “69% of kids do better at math.” That figure describes how many of the individual study comparisons favored the music group, not how many individual children improved. The cleaner summary number, and the one that matters most, is a small-to-moderate overall effect: real, but not huge.

The researcher also found the effect was bigger for younger children and for basic math skills, like arithmetic, than for older students or advanced math. The study itself flagged a limit worth repeating here: with only 245 studies to pool, there was not enough data to fully separate out the roles of gender, family income, or how long a child studied music.

The UK Study That Found “It Depends on Age”

A study from University College London looked closer at when the link shows up. Researchers ran a two-year music program for children ages 4 to 7 in an English primary school. They compared these kids to a matched control group who did not take part. General math scores did not always differ between the music group and the control group. But the youngest children in the program showed a real gain in math. That gain lined up closely with a separate test of spatial reasoning. Spatial reasoning means the mental skill of picturing and rotating shapes in your head.

The researchers’ own reading of this is worth stating plainly. The math benefit did not show up evenly across every age and every child. It showed up most clearly in the youngest kids. It tracked closely with one specific mental skill, not with music in general. That is a more careful claim than “music helps math.” It is also a more honest one.

The Study That Found the Opposite: Music Students Doing Worse in China

Not every well-designed study agrees with the two above. Leaving this one out would be dishonest. A Chinese study tracked 500 middle school students in two cities in Shandong province. It followed them across three full years of school. Some students studied music seriously during this time. Others did not. The non-music students scored higher in both math and physics than the music students. The gap grew wider each year.

Music training was linked to achievement, but only when combined with other factors, like a parent’s education level and how much a student did outside of school. On its own, music training did not predict better grades in this group. The researchers’ own explanation points to time, not talent. Many of these students were preparing music skills for university entrance exams, and that likely meant less time for math and physics study during the same years.

What This Adds Up To

Put these three studies together, and a more honest picture forms than any single headline. A large 2023 review found a real, if modest, link between music and math. That link was strongest when the two subjects were taught together on purpose. A UK study found a similar link, but mainly in young children, tied to one specific mental skill, not to music in general. A Chinese study found the opposite result. There, the cause was less time for math study, not less talent. The fair summary is not “music makes kids better at math.” It is closer to this: in the right setting, there is a real, measurable link. It is not automatic, and it is not guaranteed for every child.

Music Lessons at ABC Academy of Music

We would rather share the real, mixed research than sell you a slogan. What the evidence does support is this: structured music lessons, especially started young, link to real cognitive benefits, math included, in many well-designed studies. ABC Academy of Music offers piano, guitar, voice, drums, and our Music Together® program for younger children across our Toronto-area locations. Browse our class schedule to find the right fit, or contact us with questions about getting started.