No Shit Sherlock : Supportive parents do more than good schools to boost children's exam results

[TalkinPeace2]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19923891

You don't say ....

'Our study shows that parents need to be aware of how important they are'

hahaha...jeez how much did this conclusion cost?

Well to be fair, some rich parents believe that you just have to pay money to private schools and it will make your children clever.

It's interesting that it mentions at the bottom about scheduled activities and playing with children more as a positive - sometimes on these forums it is emphasised that children need lots of free play and that too many activities is a bad thing. I guess there's a balance.

Difficult to calculate, I think, since the most involved parents will ensure their DCs are in the best schools available anyway.

A slippery mixture I suspect.

I dont think this is news. It just reinforces something that has been known since the 1960's - that its parents who make a child successful although school can fail a child.

I had no idea!!!!!!

Strike me pink.

Skippy, rich parents sending kids to boarding schools are buying not good schooling, but good parenting. I laugh when my DP says things like "When we lived in Nigeria". No, darling, your biological parents lived in Nigeria, you lived in your school with your real upbringing parents.

Tiggy, I read about a research when they calculated correlation with parents involvement quite clearly. The subject of the research were young musicians, participants of the international competitions. The researchers asked parents about family involvement in studies - say, if the child is just dropped at teacher's door, or parent/guardian goes with the child, waits in the corridor or sits in the classroom, records the homework, checks/guides doing the homework and so forth. All that was compared to the children's performance in those competitions.

So, it is possible to do quite meaty statistical research in this field.

HT of a popular primary school told me this emphatically 7 years ago, and said there was plenty of research to back it up.

As per the link, the research was American - where tutoring and school catchments are not an issue
BUT
It has been well known in all educational circles that the most accurate guide to a child's academic outcomes are the academic qualifications of the mother.
All other factors come second.
Bright mothers are more likely to be able to support their children in both tangible and intangible ways.
So the research just reinforced something that nobody in the professional field argues about, so it was a waste of the funders' money.

Gah it absolutely should not be this way. This is just so ELITIST! Why does everyone accept the wild differences between children of can't/won't support and can/will support parents? Schools should do their utmost to minimise those differences and instead what do they do? Delegate reading to parents, delegate times tables to parents, delegate school homework to parental supervision, delegate projects to parental supervision... gaaaaah. That's just one set of privileged people passing the torch to the next set! Why does everyone think it's ok?

Do you think that now more women work that factor may even out to include the father's education talkin?

I mean (I'm getting on a soapbox) people use this research to justify getting parents more involved. Wrong! It's a justification for bringing things back into the classroom and letting the supportive parents do the other stuff, extra reading, cooking, gardening etc etc. Make involved parents MORE important and you just end up with more inequality!

Am I allowed another gaaaah and maybe a few more exclamation marks, or maybe a harrumph or a stomp around or something.

But Brycie an education is about far more than schooling...so how can a school ever replicate a good education?

Sounds like you're resorting to semantics there. If you want to talk about schooling, fine - I think schooling is too important to be left to the lottery of whether you have involved parents.

wordfactory
there are multiple issues hidden inside it - one of which is that around 10% of children do not have the father named on their birth certs.
But if you take it as 'acting as father', still not sure - even with more and more Mums working, in higher achieving couples childcare still mostly falls to the mother, or her choice of Nanny/Childminder/Nursery.
It comes down to the Mom's rant (been removed from Youtube many times but I'm sure you've seen it) that Dads only get when they become full time househusbands.
In your house who does the up/dressed/breakfast/teeth/bag/music/lunch/coat/PE kit/homework routine ....
in the vast vast bulk of houses it falls to Mums
and how well it is done comes down to Maternal intelligence and perception of its importance.

Brycie Maybe we should send all kids away to Boarding school, then those pesky parents are well out of the way.

Plus this was about exam results and good schools, not sure where the whole holistic thing came in except as a way to somehow deny that it's not completely ELITIST!!

Huff puff huff puff.

TalkingPeace, don't think we'd have to send the children away? Just stop sending the work to be done at home. Much more straightforward!

It really irritates me to see this defence of social immobility, I'm smiling at how annoyed I am, I know it's ridiculous but oh it does get on my nerves! Sorry to inflict it on anyone reading.

Brycie
I'm not sure why you are so puffed about elitism and good schools.
Its AMERICAN research.
In America you go to your catchment school, home educate or go private.
How is this research about elitism

TalkingPeace: it's elitist because it means "good" parents (sorry for the shorthand) pass on knowledge to their children and "bad" (or simply too busy or badly educated parents) don't. That's a lottery for the child and it's not damn fair. Schools should do the utmost to reduce the impact of that lottery. Sending work home to be done with parents exacerbates the impact of that lottery. That's why it's elitist. It's the cement of social immobility.

Brycie - Elitist really?!! I was looking for the in your 15.04 post then I realised you are serious!