To think academic success is 90% of the time down to the parents

[TameSacha]

Sparked by a conversation I had at the school gates last week about how another parent wouldn’t be bothering with half term homework (which was making a collage).

I have DS8 and DD6. I read with each of them daily (they read to me and vice versa, takes about ten minutes per child), we do five minutes on their maths apps each day, and things like times tables songs in the car. We try to do at least one educational trip a term that matches with what one of them is learning about (think looking at and drawing a bridge or going to the local museum for Victorians, not going to Egypt for Egyptians). I read their syllabus each term so we can talk about the topics at home.

To me this is a perfectly normal part of child-rearing and supports the education they get at school, where underpaid teachers are on crowd control with thirty kids, some of whom don’t want to or aren’t able to learn.

AIBU to think it’s a parent’s responsibility to support their child’s learning outside of school?

@HelmholtzWatson I just thought as a scientist you may be interested in my genetic mix and my bizzare sibling story. My Mother had 6 children. I am the only one with a different Father. A brief relationship. I was the only one who went to University. I was raised with my Mothers children. When older I met my Fathers other children, another 5 half siblings, already adults. They all went to University or took professional exams and are academically much higher achieving than the siblings I was raised with. DH was a Prof in a science subject. He always says your Fathers genetics saved you and there is an entire dissertation right there. Personality wise though not raised with my other siblings I am just like them and they were raised in a different country and I did not meet them till I was 20. All of my half siblings are much older than me on both sides.

That parent sounds lazy. There is a level of respect you need to instill. So yes, the collage may be silly, but if your teacher assigned it to you, you have to do it. If you're teaching them at the ages of 6-8 that they don't have to do their homework, god help you when you reach teenage years.

Yes, parents need to be supportive.

But there are some homework projects, at primary level especially, which are basically homework for parents. We've had paint and design an egg competitions at age 5, make a themed Easter bonnet age 4, design a book in a jar age 8, design a fully functioning game involving magnets age 7, make a 3D model of a heart age 12, make a 3D model of the Earth's structure and of a cell age 11 and many others I've probably pushed out of my conscious thoughts by now.

When these projects are either unsuited to the age and dexterity of young children (the book in a jar one especially is fiddly as hell, as is the egg design) or require the purchase of materials and then time for research and building, many families are put off. I'm lucky that I work term-time only, but I can fully imagine how horrible it is for some parents having to spend that much time on a homework project that does little to further a child's understanding or engagement or count towards their educational achievement. That's not being unsupportive of the school; that is schools being insensitive to the time, money and efforts parents can invest, especially in my deprived area.

I have access to a lot of educational materials and my children are well ahead of their peers, but I put it down to my own level of education (enabling me to talk to my children about the world a lot) and to the few opportunities I can provide at home and on limited day trips, not the level of art projects my children complete at home.

Where parents can support I’m sure most do.

I couldn’t - struggling financially on my own and working stupid hours. Ds ended up at a pretty bad school and started at Warwick uni this year. His best friend came from a huge family - neither parent worked and he just started Law at an RG this year (but this kid was exceptionally bright and his loving parents didn’t know how to support him as no one in family had experience of higher Ed).

so help is help, poverty is poverty, nurturing is nurturing but some manage (god knows how) to smash that educational ceiling.

We took a very different approach from you with the kids, which was to encourage them to identify interests when small and support them exploring those interests. We talked with the school and, as their position was that homework was an optional task at first school age, we only did the things the kids wanted to. My personal opinion is that the UK curriculum can be a bit restrictive as it’s so focused on building towards something that can be tested in SATs and that sometimes exploring totally different things at home can be more beneficial to kids than doing more of the same. I also agree with some previous posters that formal homework for young kids is primarily set to appease pushy parents vs out of any evidence it’s very important or helpful.

I’ve never done it your way at all but I do think I’m still engaged and that I’m not a crap parent for not worrying overly about spellings or times tables. If your parents are totally disinterested in spending time with you doing anything that helps you learn new things then you are likely right it’s a disadvantage. My view of what kind of engagement helps and what learning outside school entails is a lot wider than yours seems to be though.

Overall what we are doing seems to work ok. Both are reasonably good at Maths. Eldest is comfortably at expected level and getting towards being above expected on SAT practice. Youngest has spent most of primary so far working in a group with older kids. She was trying out eldest’s SAT practice for fun the other night so reckon she’ll do ok.
Both have a reading age above their actual age, eldest is years ahead, youngest only a few months. Both read for pleasure and both have a wide enough vocabulary that they can follow things like information boards in museums or, annoyingly, our books or work emails over our shoulder.

Eldest is currently working on her bronze arts award early at her fine arts class, learning extra French and trying out Ukrainian on Dualingo and working on writing a short play with her drama class. She’s also in a choir, a football team and scouts. She can get herself to/from school & most of her classes independently. She’s a strong swimmer, knows how to cook & can do bike maintenance.
Youngest is a decent dancer and has been in the cast for some local shows, is working on her explore arts award, is teaching herself to play keyboard with an app and already has the basics down on guitar.
She’s in glee club & cubs, does paddle boarding and canoeing weekly and is a great cook. She’s very creative and working on a lot of bracelet making and she does little alterations to her clothes.

I don't think academic outcomes are down to parents entirely, but having a parent that fosters good attitudes to learning is the biggest indicator of success long term. I work in primary education and see this first hand.

My own DD has achieved excellent results getting nothing less than As in all her exams at both GCSE and A-level. Of course all of it was down to her own hard work and commitment, and nothing to do directly with us in the end. However, when she was younger we always encouraged her, always supported her learning, always took an interest in her school work, always provided her with space and time to study. And previous to that we played with her, spoke to her and socialised with her, took her to interesting places, she did varied extra-curricular activities, read to her etc. All these things help to produce engaged and bright and articulate children who are morel likely to engage with their teachers and the curriculum at school.

That sort of post makes me think "Bless, someone doesn't realise they have kids who currently are compliant".

And children need breaks. I wouldn't like to be told on my annual leave that I better do a couple of spreadsheets of work just because.

Are you talking about fluid or crystallised tests that measure IQ? I'd be interested in seeing your data supporting your hypothesis.

Which cognitive abilities are you claiming aren't impacted by education, all of them or specific skills, ie those classed as malleable and peripheral, or general abilities like the general g factor of intelligence?

I ask because the most conclusive studies I've seen suggest a few IQ points for every year of education. The most obvious example being the observable drop in cognitive ability in kids after the summer holiday.

I read a thought provoking article recently, which said that we no longer live in a meritocracy (if we ever truly did live in one). Instead, we now live in an inheritocracy, where what will matter above all else in terms of a child's life chances and quality of life, is what they inherit. The more assets and resources they inherit, the better their quality of life.

I see it happening in real life. I know people who lucked out by buying up loads of BTL properties when the mortgage market changed to allow for BTL mortgages (going back 30 years now), and who openly sneer at education and mock those who go to work, even those on very good wages, because they are making huge amounts of money and never needed a formal education to make it. Their children will probably reap those rewards too. The truth is, none of us know what the financial situation is in a lot of households, and the old norms about highly educated middle class professions leading to good wages and a high standard of living don't really stack up anymore. Personally, I value education, but that isn't true of everyone.

OP, just for the record, I don’t think you sound smug, but genuinely interested in the question!
A lot of it is definitely nurture over nature in the early years: my DH is one of 5 boys, and each of those boys, born 2 years apart, had a very different version of their parents as they went through school and circumstances changed.
So the oldest was taught to do his homework and became very self-motivated and self-reliant, as was the second. The third, my husband, and fourth were both very, very bright, but without the attention of their parents (who were, by their formative years at school, both working two jobs and unable to guide them into knuckling down and getting on with homework) didn’t do well at school and both left school to do technical jobs from 16 - at which they both excelled, and were able to progress later.
The youngest, being in a family where the oldest two had flown the nest, started to excel in secondary school once he discovered advanced Mathematics, passed all his GCSE’s with flying colours, took about 7 A levels (not all at once) and gained degrees from no less than 4 Universities and has not one, but two Doctorates and is a leading light in his chosen field!
So I believe it’s a variety of things:

1. Amount of attention available from parents to help with homework
2. Natural intelligence
3. The right environment to do homework
4. Good attitude towards learning (child)

…to name but a few. So your conversation at the school gates could have indicated any of those four situations - or the child might be so challenging about doing homework that she’s decided to opt for better familial harmony in the hope that her DC will catch up!

You do sound smug. In my experience it's not actually true. I have two kids very different. My dd 13 is very bright, she does all her homework without any prompting she gets excellent grades and I can't claim to have any input in it. She is just very driven good at sports ect. My son 6 is good at reading but he doesn't really like school finds it hard to concentrate ect. I actually find it a bit OTT to expect children to do homework at that age. We didn't have homework until year 7 and I think that is fine, I got good grades. I read with my son he does numbots but I don't force him to do homework as he's found it hard enough being at school for hours trying to sit still. He needs to unwind. All children are different and learn differently he is very happy and confident my dd is shy and anxious. He will do very well in life with his confidence regardless of grades.

I can tell none of your children are autistic (or any other similar challenges)
Most parents want the best for their children but when even the basics of getting your child to eat, use the toilet, get ready for bed on a school day takes all your and their emotional energy, you're not going to start on homework!
My child is well ahead in lots of areas and behind in others, but the main credit I take on that is providing the genetics and not causing any avoidable trauma, and the other 10% at best is from what I did to support their learning.

Well, your kids are still in primary school so we don’t know the outcome yet. Please report back after GCSEs so we find out whose kids did best. TIA

Yet your relative is showing his son a good work ethic and that should be applauded.

Can you invite the child round and half an hour collage making?

What I recall from my own childhood is my dad reading with me at about 3 or 4. I could write my name at 3 and I could read some of the content from Twinkle magazine. He used to brag to people about how clever I was and it was mentioned in the extended family. Then as I got older my parents didn't really bother at all. They didn't go to parents' evenings and didn't want me to go to university. My dad could not have even told you what GCSEs I did. He didn't want me doing extra curricular things at school, baulked at paying for practical classes and had no interest at all in my homework. Though my mum came with me to get my A level results. Otherwise showed no interest whatsoever.

I still went on to do a degree (2:1), postgraduate taught and a PhD though.

My parents were alcoholics that didn’t even know I was doing my GCSE’s. I passed with great marks, went to college, came out of University with a 2:1 and am now studying for my MBA. My parents had absolutely nothing to do with it.

I went to a boarding school for my entire school life, so rarely had engagement with parents to help with homework/being read to at night. I come from a high achieving family who had far higher expectations than I provided and was a huge disappointment to them. Compared to my peers I was a high achiever, so it is subjective.

I hated homework and often froze on simple essays in senior school. Always got "not working to full ability" or "lazy" on my reports but got all A "star" to B at GCSE. For me it was more about encouragement - if I had had more, rather than the constant idea that for some reason I alone had to get all As without any support or input, I might have put in more effort. I knew I could coast and do better than people who did homework and revised. Other than the ridiculously high expectations of my family and teachers, I know everything I did was by myself - you don't get parent's writing essays or coursework for you at boarding school!

No I don't agree. I do think one should be supportive and encouraging and help when needed, and reading is always good. But I'm not the 'must know alphabet before nursery' or testing vocabulary with 200 flash cards. Some kids are just not academic. Some are highly self motivated. Some are bright but can't be bothered, some are not so bright but work very hard. And everything in between.
Taking an interest in your child's education id important, but you don't have to be an unpaid TA.

Completely agree, the day to day input from parents makes a big difference. Obviously doing this one collage won’t make a difference but it may be indicative of a general attitude of “you don’t need to bother doing the things that school have asked of you” which won’t serve the child well in school or when they get to the world of work and realise they do need to actually do the work that is expected from them.

We never ‘did’ homework at primary. I had kids who chose to read books, draw, write stories, play games, bake, play outside etc. it seemed bizarre to pull them off that stuff to do something often quite dry. We wrote a letter politely explaining why our kids wouldn’t be doing it. Headteacher agreed. Shortly afterwards homework was abolished in the school.

I never had a clue what was going on at school topic wise. We rarely did any kind of trip that could be classed as educational. We did read but for the joy of it, not as a chore. They had loads of lovely down time learning to entertain themselves.

They are both now top set teens. Not doing homework or museum trips didn’t seem to affect their progress.

Don’t judge; just do you and let others do them.

Hmm, yes and no, but mainly no, lol. I think creating a culture around the importance of learning and education is a vital part of a parents job. The rest is down to the hard work of the child. My parents were both academics so education was seen as very important, but I don’t recall much input from them re homework etc, they were very busy and wanted us to work hard and succeed on our own - so we did, and we did!

No, I think it is 70% intelligence, 10% determination, 15% hard graft and about 5% down to the parents.

In the nicest possible way OP you're probably someone I would avoid at the school gates!

Of course parental support helps a child but there are way more factors coming into play. And why is your son telling you about the other boy not handing in homework? How are you discussing this? Because if my child was saying that I'd be encouraging them to chat about lots of different reasons someone might struggle to hand in homework. Social awareness, a sense of social justice and good emotional intelligence is so important to install in kids as well as academics. In fact social intelligence is highly sought after in lots of jobs now.

You work in a school? Not a teacher though? It’s their children, not they’re children. Maybe yiu missed that homework.
No I don’t suggest you do homework in the hotel room, though many of my (older) pupils happily do homework on the plane.