The Education Secretary has suggested that grandfathers may be able to give some children the male role models they need by going into schools. Lisa Salmon asks the Grandparents' Association how granddads can aid learning, and which children will benefit.

Grandparents can be one of the best resources a family has - and for so much more than tea and cakes on a Sunday.

Indeed, Education Secretary Alan Johnson highlighted the value of the nation's grandparents, and particularly grandfathers, recently when he pointed out that nearly five million British grandparents regularly looked after their grandchildren. He said: "Grandfathers can provide a vital male influence in the absence of a responsible father. We should do more to support them."

One of the ways grandparents are being supported as both role models and mentors for their grandchildren is through the Learning with Grandparents scheme, which shows schools how they can work with grandparents to help primary age children learn literacy, language and numeracy.

The campaign, which is run by the Basic Skills Agency, gives schools resources to help them work with grandparents, plus ideas for activities grandparents can do with their grandchildren, and practical information about what happens in schools.

"We wanted schools to see the huge resource out there - grandparents," says Carol Taylor, joint director of the agency.

She points out that more than a third of the UK's 13 million grandparents now spend the equivalent of three days a week caring for their grandchildren, and says: "Schools are always looking for families to get involved, but work can make it difficult for some parents.

"Grandparents helping at school shows children how important family is, and the grandparents feel they have more time and patience with the kids than parents.

"They make great role models."

And the fact that the Education Secretary has highlighted the part that grandfathers can play in children's - and particularly working class boys' - lives has been welcomed by the Grandparents' Association.

Its chief executive, Lynn Chesterman, says: "Grandfathers tend to get forgotten, as it's usually the grandmothers who are perceived to do most of the caring.

"But grandfathers can be great male role models - and not just in single parent families, but in two-parent families where they might have more time to spend with the kids than the dad."

This is endorsed by psychologist Steve Biddulph, author of the bestseller Raising Boys, who says: "It's not just working class boys who are under-fathered, and it's not just sons of single mothers.

"Single mothers are often very aware of the need for male role models, whereas affluent families with two parents may be too caught up in career and material goals for fathers to really have time for their children."

And that, he says, is where grandfathers come in.

"Grandfathers are often more patient, less judgmental, and delight more in their grandchildren's conversation and interests.

"They aren't burdened with the worries and pressures that parents are, and so convey a more unconditional love that children need."

He adds: "We need good men in the lives of children if we want to grow good, caring adults.

"For boys this is doubly so. Grandfathers are a ready source of this. Though some need encouragement and not all might have aptitude, most will be a real asset."