The power of parents in student success
Strong new evidence which shows that parental effort in encouraging and supporting education has a bigger effect than the efforts made by schools and children combined gives the GEMS parental engagement programme even greater impetus. The evidence is in research by the English universities of Leicester and Leeds led by Professor Gianni De Fraja, Professor of Economics and head of department at the University of Leicester.
The research is published in the prestigious Review of Economics and Statistics, which is edited at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The research is based on the experiences of children in the National Child Development Study. The NCDS is following the lives of all those living in Great Britain who were born in one particular week in 1958.
The aim of the study is to improve understanding of the factors affecting human development over the whole lifespan.
The research - “Must Try Harder: Evaluating the Role of Effort in Educational Attainment.” confirms that effort – from parents, children and schools – strongly improves educational attainment but that parental effort has the biggest effect. It concludes that the findings could help policymakers design policies which could improve educational attainment for all.The researchers suggest that financial rewards could be given to lower income parents to encourage them to help out with homework or go to parenting classes. “It may be easier and more effective to stimulate (parental) effort in households with low socio-economic backgrounds rather than hope for their economic conditions to change,” concludes the research.
The story has been picked up by the media who described the parents who are supporting their children as “pushy”, presumably because of one of the other findings in the report – that where parents do get engaged in their children’s learning, the schools their children go to work harder. Here at GEMS we don’t see parents as “pushy” for wanting to support their children’s education. We see them as natural partners with our schools to ensure that our students do well and make the most of their potential. It is a disappointment if parents give up on their responsibility to support their children’s education, given their children spend a great deal more time with them than they do with teachers.
The report makes fascinating reading. It shows clearly that children work harder at school the more effort their parents put into their education. Infact the more children the parents have, the less effort goes into supporting their education which could reflect the reduced time available for every child in a larger family.
It also confirms an effect other researchers have found, that there is a virtuous circle when parents support the learning development of their children. Children work harder and do better because their parents are making the effort with them and that, in turn, encourages the parents to keep the effort going and the whole process continues positively affecting how well the children do at school.
Parental effort was measured by simple evidence that they were interested in their children’s learning – such as whether they read to their children, whether they attended parent meetings and their expectations for their children once they had left school. One of the things that interests me is that the children examined for this study were 16 in 1974 which was at a time when parents had a much smaller connection with what went on in the education of their children. The research actually shows that schools then were responding positively to effort from children but negatively to effort from parents. Yet even then the strong positive correlation between supportive parents and successful children was showing through. And even though children from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds were more likely to do less well than children coming from more financially successful families, the evidence appears to show those poorer children had similar capacity for effort; they just needed more encouragement at home.
What is very special about this research is that it is a rare piece of quantitative research in this hugely important area. It specifically quantifies the effect of one thing - effort from parents and students and schools – on educational attainment. It is shining a bright light on one factor and seeing the effect it has without being muddled up with the effect other potential factors might have, such as levels of ability. And coming through loud and clear is the message that parents have the biggest single effect on how well their children do at school because their positive support encourages children to work harder and schools to work harder. Our schools will always do the very best they can with all the children who come to them but your children will do better if you take an active and consistent interest in all they learn and do. The research evidence could not be clearer.
