What determines school performance

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Petersburg sociologists came to shocking conclusions, finding out what factors in the family and in the environment of the child most of all influence his academic performance

Experts from international comparative studies PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) argue that "Children from families with higher family cultural capital demonstrate higher educational results." However, a group of sociologists led by Olga Sachava, Candidate of Philology and Master's degree student in Education Management at the Higher School of Economics (St. Petersburg), with the first results refuted the opinion that a child's academic performance depends on both the level of culture and family income. It turns out that neither the level of culture, nor everyday comfort, nor the number of books on the shelves, nor the availability of money for the services of tutors, nor even the drunkenness of one of the parents directly affect the child's academic performance. A much greater influence on success in school is … communication with grandparents, family values, family holidays, personal satisfaction and professional self-realization of parents. Researchers were shocked that factors that had not been paid attention to before were important. It turns out that 50% of excellent and good students live in the same apartment with their grandparents. And it doesn't matter where the children are preparing their lessons - on the kitchen table or on the writing desk. It also doesn't matter whether they live in communal apartments or in separate ones: in not very prosperous communal apartments, of which there are still a lot in the old districts of St. Petersburg, C-students and excellent students live in equal shares. However, 40% of C grade students do not meet with their grandparents at all. Families of 73% of excellent students keep more than 200 books at home, but 75% of families of C-students also said that their family library consists of 100 books. Families of 5% of excellent students and 6% of C students owned large libraries. In low-income families with an income of up to 5,000 rubles a month per person, there were more excellent students than C grade students. From these families came 26% of all C grade students and … 30% of all excellent students! Almost the same number of excellent and C-grade students - 25% and 21%, respectively - leave families with an income of more than 20,000 rubles for each family member. But it is obvious that a larger number of good and excellent students - 67% in primary and 73% in secondary school - live in families where family holidays are always celebrated. In the families of the majority of C grade students, family holidays are rarely or not celebrated at all. Sociologists saw a consistent pattern: the higher the family income and the lower the culture of family holidays, the lower the child's grades. And vice versa: the higher the culture of family holidays in relation to family income (average or even low), the higher the student's academic performance! The services of tutors, courses, the amount of money invested in them do not bring results in the form of good grades, if there is no full-fledged communication between the parents and the child in the family.

An interesting fact is that 56% of parents of excellent and good students work, according to them, for self-realization, and getting satisfaction from their professional activities. As for the C-graders, their parents, in their own words, in 80% of them work "for the sake of money."

The researchers also found that, contrary to popular belief, parental drunkenness alone is not a determinant of poor academic performance. However, if parents find the strength to acknowledge the problem and try to work on it, this has a positive effect on the child's academic performance.

A child's school success at all levels of education is directly influenced by the values of his family, - says Olga Sachava.- The more important for adults the relationship within their family, the more valuable family life is for the parents of a schoolchild (including relations with older relatives), the more attention parents pay to building family ties, the higher the school grades of their child. Competently built intra-family ties testify to the psychological competence of the parents. Therefore, they can be called a key factor in determining a child's academic performance.

And one more surprising regularity: the more satisfied the parents are with life, and regardless of the material level, the more successful their children are in their studies. So communicate with relatives, organize holidays at home, love your job, gladly accept your life as it is, and your children will study well! Elena Mikhailova More materials on the school topic Source See also the film: School Power