Parent influence is the key to school success
The enduring influence of the effect of parent engagement on the successful education of their children comes over loud and clear in a new book based on more than ten years of research on children from the age of three.
A child’s background emerges as roughly twice as important as the pre-school or primary school they attend in how they do at school and how they develop socially
according to the research summarised in “Early Childhood Matters. Evidence from the Effective Pre-school and Primary Education Project,” edited by a team of leading researchers from the universities of Oxford and London.
A good home learning environment, in which parents encourage and develop their child, has an astonishing impact on performance. Children coming from homes with a good home learning environment show 21 per cent increases in literacy and 16 per cent increases in numeracy at the age of five. A number of things are already known to have an influence on how a child does at school such as whether the parents – particularly the mother – has a university degree, what the parents do for a living, birth weight and birthday – how young you are in an academic school year.
But a good home learning environment comes out as the biggest influence of all and, most crucially, can be provided regardless of the wealth or social standing of the parents or their occupations, says the new research. In fact some affluent homes produce poor home learning environments and some socially disadvantaged ones produce good ones.
What the researchers believe is happening is that children who get support in learning at home from their parents are “learning to learn” – a critical factor in how well they access the school curriculum.They see themselves as good at learning and they absorb their parents’ values and aspirations which means that they enjoy and value learning.
There is even evidence of a mutually beneficial feedback loop going on as the child learns from the parent and the parent is stimulated to teach more by the child’s attainment. Interestingly, girls are more likely to have a good home learning environment than boys – and most girls outperform most boys in literacy and number in primary school.
It isn’t just learning that benefits from a good home learning environment – children who get one are more social, less hyperactive and better able to regulate their emotions – so less likely to have temper tantrums, for example . The 3,000 children in the study, which is the largest piece of European research of its kind, come from a range of social backgrounds. The researchers have already discovered that a good home learning environment can protect you from things that could damage your education like living in a poor neighbourhood or going to a bad school. They have also found that the existence of a key figure in the child’s family or wider social network – who values learning and cares about the child – is often enough to make children succeed when they have had a disadvantaged start to life.
The research which began when the children were three is continuing now they group is in its teens. It will be interesting to see how long the effects of a good home learning background continue as the children grow older and more independent. One thing is absolutely clear a combination of great parent engagement and great schools is giving children the best possible start in life.
Early Childhood Matters. Evidence from the Effective Pre-school; and Primary Education Project, edited by Kathy Sylva, Professor of Educational Psychology, Oxford University; Edward Melhuish, Professor of Human Development, Birkbeck College, London University; Pam Sammons, Professor of Education, Oxford University; Iram Siraj-Blatchford, professor of Education, Institute of Education, London University; and Brenda Taggart, Senior Research Officer, Institute of Education, London University
