News
Parents' effort key to child's educational performance research suggests
2 Nov 2010
Reading bedtime stories, helping with homework and regularly attending parents’ evenings all encourage children – and their teachers – to put in extra effort, a study by Leicester and Leeds Universities has suggested.
In fact, the level of parental involvement has a greater impact on a pupil’s eventual grades than the efforts of either the school or the child themselves, the researchers said.
Researchers found that children from poorer backgrounds were not inclined to work less hard, but parents' attitudes and ability to put in the extra effort makes more of a difference to their attainment than schools themselves.
The findings suggested that policies aimed at improving parental effort could be effective in increasing children's educational attainment.
Using the National Child Development Study, which follows a group of individuals born during one week in March 1958 throughout their lives, the researchers looked at the effort pupils, parents and schools made towards a child's schooling.
It looked at pupils' attitudes, such as whether they thought school was a waste of time and teachers' views about pupils' laziness.
Researchers also measured how interested parents were in their child's education, such as whether they read to the child.
They then compared these factors with the results gained by pupils as they progressed through secondary school, taking O-levels and A-levels or other courses.
Professor Gianni De Fraja, head of economics at Leicester, said:
"Parents from a more advantaged environment exert more effort, and this influences positively the educational attainment of their children.
"The parents' background also increases the school's effort, which increases the school achievement. Why schools work harder where parents are from a more privileged background we do not know. It might be because middle-class parents are more vocal in demanding that the school work hard. Influencing parental effort is certainly something that is much easier than modifying their social background."
Read more on the Guardian website.
Read more on the Telegraph website.
