Mental Health

Study: Parenting more Important than Schools for Academic Achievement

By Drishya Nair | Update Date: Oct 11, 2012 08:41 AM EDT

How your child performs in academics may have more to do with your skills as a parent than the quality of the school that your child goes to.

A new study suggests that parental involvement is more important for academic achievements, than the school itself.

The research has been conducted by researchers from North Carolina State University, Brigham Young University and the University of California, Irvine.

"Our study shows that parents need to be aware of how important they are, and invest time in their children - checking homework, attending school events and letting kids know school is important," Dr. Toby Parcel, a professor of sociology at NC State and co-author of a paper on the work was quoted as saying by Phys.Org.

"That's where the payoff is."

For the study, the researchers analyzed data from a national representative study that collected information from more than 10,000 students, as well as their parents, teachers and school administrators.

The researchers, most importantly, concentrated at the effects of "family social capital" and "school social capital" on a child's academic achievement.

Family social capital is the parent-child bond such as trust, open lines of communication and active engagement in a child's academic life, while School social capital is the school's ability to serve as a positive environment for learning by involving students in extracurricular activities, addressing individual issues of the students, etc.

The findings of the study revealed that students with high levels of family social capital and low levels of school social capital performed better academically than students with high levels of school social capital but low family social capital, the report said.

"In other words, while both school and family involvement are important, the role of family involvement is stronger when it comes to academic success," Parcel says.

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