Current research into the nature of the relationship between participation in physical activity/sport and educational performance has produced mixed, inconsistent and often non-comparable results. For example, some cross-sectional studies illustrate a positive correlation between participation in sport and physical activity and academic success (e.g. maths, reading, acuity. reaction times). However, critics point to a general failure to solve the issue of direction of cause - whether intelligence leads to success in sport, whether involvement in sport enhances academic performance, or whether a third factor (e.g. personality traits) explains both.

Longitudinal studies also generally support the suggestion that academic performance is enhanced, or at least maintained, by increased habitual physical activity. Yet such studies are criticized for not being definitive because some do not use randomised allocation of pupils to experimental and control groups (to control for pre-existing differences), others tend to use (subjective) teacher-assigned grades to assess academic achievement, rather than standardised and comparable tests; and some programmes include parallel interventions, making it difficult to isolate specific effects.

More generically, one key piece of research illustrates that both acute exercise and chronic training programmes have small, but beneficial, positive impacts on cognitive performance. However, this study concludes that as experimental rigour decreased, effect size increased. Further, generalisation is limited because effect size is influenced by the nature and type of exercise, the type of participants, the nature of the cognitive tests and the methodological quality of the study.