Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Background of parents still has biggest impact on exam success for British schoolchildren.
New research funded by The Sutton Trust and conducted by researchers at Essex University has been published this month
The report based on research by John Ermisch and Emilia Del Bono from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University, investigated the link between the educational levels of parents and the educational outcomes of their teenage children growing up in Britain today.
In 2006 (for children born in 1989/1990), the odds of obtaining at least 5 GCSEs with grades of A*-C were still 4 times higher for children of degree educated parents than for children whose parents did not go to University. The relative advantage has declined over time. In 1986 ( for children born in 1970 ) , the odds of obtaining good O-level results were 4.6 times higher for children of parents with higher education, in 1974 (children born in 1958) the odds were 6.5 times higher.
In 2006 79% of children from degree educated parents obtained at least 5 GCSEs at A*-C grades compared with 33% of children whose parents left school without any o-levels or equivalent qualification. This gap of 46% was the same in 1986 and 44% gap in 1974.
The research found that the wide gap in achievement was almost entirely accounted for by the likelihood of children from higher educated parents attending higher achieving secondary schools.
The research also looked at international comparisons and found there were bigger achievement gaps in the UK related to parental qualification than in the USA, Germany and Australia. Further international comparisons with Scandinavain countries are due to be published later this year in order to provide more detail to the initial findings by UNICEF. UNICEF combined sets of existing data to establish that children of less educated mothers in Finland, Poland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden are only about one and a half times more likely to get low marks.
Click here to read the report in full.
Click here to read a summary of the earlier findings by UNICEF