to ask what the most important factors actually are in helping children do well academically

[somewherewest]

According to a poster over on the AIBU thread about grammar schools several essays suggest that "the most deciding factor of any child's academic achievement at school is the educational background of its mother and/or the number of books in the family home".

Is parental education genuinely such a decisive factor? If it is how do we go about trying to promote an educational 'level playing field' for all children?

At secondary levels, friendship/ peer groups play a huge part in performance. If a child gets into an unhealthy friendship group the shutters come down and very little that the parents or teachers can say has an effect, sadly.
Organisational skills are also hugely important. Students that can't time manage fall into a spiral of mixed deadlines, detentions etc which affects their self esteem. Cue entrance from the dodgy friendship group.

Id like to see studies into poor but stable and happy home lives compared to all the rest.

Yes, this would be a really interesting study. Problem is these studies deal in blunt instruments, and it would be hard to measure what constitutes a poor but stable/happy home, just as it's hard to measure a wealthy/unstable home.

That would be interesting AlPacino, but I don't think we could get a conclusion of the real effect of poverty because we have the pupil premium which means teachers can end up more focused on raising the achievement of poorer pupils than they would do without it. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just that a proper comparison can't really be made.

The biggest factor, I think, as a teacher, is probably a mix of genes (I don't think it's terribly controversial to say that two intelligent people are more likely to have a fairly intelligent child than two parents who are really not very bright) and home support in the early days - reading with your child and talking with your child make a massive difference. Work ethic is really important and that comes from the home example too.

On paper my son is a "red flag" - single parent family and FSMs.
But he comes from a happy, relaxed and stable home. I have an MA and am considering pursuing a PhD.
He is a couple of levels ahead of where he "should be" mainly because he lives in an environment where learning is encouraged and valued.

I know lovely its a shame its never factored in though, for wealthy and poor....lots of divorce, un happy marriages, DV, children are somewhere in all this having to listen to arguments, who cares about homework when you cant even hear yourself think....

I suspect lots of children who have the ability IQ wise and or the determination are stumped because of an un happy home life.

The dogy friends mentioned above are the substitute family.

I do think some will get solace from a single minded goal to study and learn however some will just be so miserable, getting into school, with their friends to have a laugh and keep sane, will be top priority.

I have quite a few friends and family who could have all done better but were simply caught in the drama of their parents lives, ie arguing several days/nights a week, every week, screaming matches, things thrown and smashed, one parent leaving family home, then back, then gone, and so on. How can any child concentrate on themselves if its all about this fight at home?

It's language. Language and vocabulary have a huge impact on academic outcomes. Children of educated parents are exposed to a larger, more complex vocabulary and as a result are more able to access education.
In general children from lower socioeconomic groups have a much poorer vocabulary and often never catch up. Regardless of how excellent teachers are they cannot make up for lack of exposure to vocabulary at home.

Ah. stripy, quoting me on the first page. Yes I have said don't just look at how all the state schoolers do in their Oxbridge degrees. Look at people at aged 30 and 40 and their earnings and careers.

Of course it's only sexist families where women do more with children. Where real women are involved who often earn much more than men and are really good role models to children because they work full time and have balanced lives the father has as much contact with the children as the mother so the father's education matters as much as the mother's. The days of rich men marrying low IQ secretaries are over. All recent studies show people of similar education and income these days marry whether at the high income high IQ end of the scale or low down the scale.

If I am looking at what makes children do well (howeve ryou define that) first it is 50% genes. Marry the low IQ man with the good chest or woman and repent at leisure...and have probably have low IQ children (although two very bright people tend to have slightly less clever children because of how genetics work although not very much lower).

Secondly if we are talking about academic achievement at school if mothers earn a lot and pay 5 sets of school fees like I do/did then of course the child is likely to do well. Only 8% of children go to private schools but they make up 50% of good university entrants, 80% of judges etc etc. Nothing much a mother can do as good for her child as pick a very high paid career in fact and it's a load of fun too.

Thirdly, do what most of us do whose children do well - read to them every night, feed them good foods (not sugar), cuddle and love them, breast feeding (I expressed at work and fed all the children at least a year yet in the UK we have the worst breastfeeding rates in the EU and most women give up very very early on), as children get older let them read to you. Buy them a good peer group as teenagers so their role models are good whatever good to you means which might mean virginal religious girls who leave school at 15 to marry or it might mean top school in the country where girls go to Oxbridge or whatever is important to you.

Fourth relax. We are so laid back in this house. One of my teenagers told me tonight I'd said all he should aim for is slightly better GCSEs than his brother. I said well I would not object if you got all A*s by the way. You don't have to get as low results as you can get away with! Laughing as I type. Perhaps we are too laid back.

I think whatever your parents education shouldn't really matter, because the school should be able to cope with DC who have backgrounds with no learning support, of course it helps but it shouldn't be so important.

Alpacino the point is schools do try very hard to cope with kids that have no learning support at home. In a school I taught at in one of the most deprived areas they had:

Lots of learning mentors for all sorts of issues
On site unit for kids who could not cope with full time table or large classes
SEN department to address low literacy levels on a one to one basis and in small groups. This opened before school.
Two learnign resource centeres for kids in KS3/4&5 to access before and after school to get help with homework, information handing and PC access.
Breakfast clubs - aimed at feeding kids to help them settle better, more than one run in different departments.
Individual staff putting in extra hours (not paid as needed) to do after school and during holidays catch up classes. Kids are taught how to learn not just what to learn.

BUT what a school cannot do is instill positive attitides after years of ingrained family values which can be anti education, low aspirations, and sometimes quite overt attitudes towards women, a life of crime (had to teach kids who were tagged) and outright racist. Not to mention violent outbursts and threats. -

BUT schools should be able to cope with these kids in a class of 30 - who then if challenged may enlist a parent who is angrily waiting in reception before you've put your coat on (thanks to texting during the lesson) OR you may find kids with comples emotional problems who are wuite articulate complain that you havnt taught them. You then get investigated, only to find out they are the only one who has failed your exam and everyone else passed with great grades. But no schools should cope.

I really think sometimes parent have not a clue what goes on in school classrooms and would be horrifed if they could be a fly on the wall. School life can be quite brutal.

Language is an interesting point.

I actually came back on here to say that while I am pretty intelligent I don't think I'm a good, involved mum. I try but find it very hard because of my physical and mental health issues.

One of the things I struggle with is just chatting, answering questions etc, it's literally exhausting for me, so the DCs miss out :(

Those results for more books and clever mums is in one of steven levinsons books just fyi but it is far more complicated than that

As a teacher, I think it's two things.

Firstly, language. Babbling back to babies hardwires in the idea that communication gets them what they want - ie their special adult giving them full attention. Talking to children when you're walking (not on the phone). Chatting to children while you're eating (not watching telly). For some of my class, I am the only person who they hear talking who has a vocabulary larger than their 10 year old friends.

The other thing is a parent with a positive attitude to learning. I know there are Matildas out there who take themselves off to the library, but they are few and far between. I believe the statistics say that the educational level of the mother is all-important, but it's the passion for education that really makes the difference.

Looking back on my own childhood, I know that intelligent, educated and supportive parents made a huge difference.

I also think that endless hours of exposure to BBC radio 4 from a young age was significant.

Kids are often profiled by postcode as well as KS2 result on entry to KS3 at secondary, along with some baseline tests.

Language is absolutly key the sensitivity of the parent in their responses is effectual in brining lnaguage on. Those babblings are the start of conversations.

fuzzpig I cant bkoody stand the chatting and the questions, I encourage as much independence as possible - I keep a child friendly dictionary and other reference books downstairs - DS is often directed towards this. Or if out stock phrase is oh we'll have to look that up later. I don't know features a lot, but we can find ou tif we...xyz. Yes Exhausting but I am peased he is inquisitive.

I believe it is nature, nurture and environment, getting the right balance and working on what they are good at.

Most interesting about the 'language' angle. In spite of our academically rather limited home life, our mother (the Irish one with scarcely any education to speak of) was impressively articulate. She had an endless supply of funny rhymes, songs, stories, jokes, and did impressions in countless accents and voices. All her sisters had the same talent. My sister and I were enchanted by all this and found her very entertaining. Her vocabulary was extensive (no idea where she learned it) and that must have influenced us. She always encouraged imaginative wordplay and oral creativity. I am a bit of a linguist and have a good ear for languages and accents. After reading the other posts here on this angle, I'm seeing that this probably developed our receptivity to learning.

You do sound just a tiiiny bit smug, Greengrow

I find the language point really interesting. DD didn't speak particularly early, but her vocabulary did grow much faster compare to her peers from about 2. At the time I assumed that her peers would catch up (and to be fair they do have time to still). But at 4 the complexity of her vocab and sentence construction is noticeably better than the average. It means that she is an interesting conversationalist and gets the best out of adults when she engages with them, so it is a virtuous circle. I now don't think that her peers will catch up with her. That advantage from the age of 2 (and possibly developing before that) will stay with her for life.

I can't tell whether DD's language acquisition is innate or environmental. I suspect it lies between the two. You can definitely hear DH and I in what she says and how she says it, but I don't think that all children would have developed the same given the same environment.

In other areas DD doesn't seem particularly advanced. For example her letter formation isn't good at all, but I am confident that school will be able to get her to a "good enough" level in handwriting once she starts. It doesn't seem as fundamental as early language acquisition.

I think the parental attitude to learning. We had little money but parents made education a priority and we all did well at school.

Followed by language and reading,exposure to different vocabulary and different concepts through different kinds of literature.

greengrow I agree that these days bright people tend to marry bright people and less bright tend to pair too.

My clever working class, went to grammar school, learnt about radios in the wartime RAF and became a technical school lecturer, married the beautiful, but dim girl next door.

My DF who was 8 during the war went to university just as the number of female students really started to rise. She married a fellow student. Very many of her peers did.

Many of my friends parents didn't go to university (my dad could of, but choose to be a practical engineer), but a lot of us did. We moved away from our rural home town and married other graduates and brought up MC DCs.

In grandpa and my dad's day grammar schools gave bright children a leg up, what ever their parents did. Now ours is a private school without bills. Full of the children of graduate parents, who can afford a tutor.

My clever WC grandfather

Greengrow you haven't mentioned the island :)

Was Greengrow just a tiny bit smug...? Her views are well known.

I think it makes me sad that I can do the interested, educated parent bit - but I can't do what she can do in terms of buying into excellent education, socialising with other highflyers etc.

Still, can't do it all.

Sometimes you have to have something to strive for. Sometimes you have to have a goal in sight and feel it would really fulfil you to get there. Sometimes you have to be aiming for something you haven't already got. I suspect lots of the most successful people in the world have this inside them. I suspect if your mum has an island or whatever, you might be a bit less focused than if you want your own island. Just a thought.