By Elena Mihailova
A group of sociologists from St. Petersburg looked into how students’ performance at school is influenced by their family and social life.
Previously, experts of international comparative studies PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) maintained that, “Children from families with higher levels of cultural capital demonstrate higher academic achievements.”
However, sociologists of Olga Sachava’s team (Dr. Ольга Сачава, Educational Administration Programme of the Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia) disproved existing theories on students’ academic performance and its dependency on the level of family’s cultural awareness or wealth.
According to their research, student’s grades are not influenced directly by a family’s cultural capital, material comfort, number of books on shelves at home, money for tutors, and not even by the fact that one of the parents is drinking.
Surprisingly, academic success is much more significantly influenced by… the student’s communication with his or her grandmother and grandfather, their family values and celebrations, as well as the personal and professional success of their parents.
The researchers were astounded to realize that among the factors influencing students’ academic success were the ones neglected and never even considered for studies before.
Take a look at the following:
50% of “A and B” students live in the same home with their grandmothers and grandfathers. It doesn’t matter where these children prepare their homework, at the family dining table or at the desk. It is also not important where the family lives, in the communal apartments or in a personal one: communal apartments in St. Petersburg are still numerous; 50% of C students and 50% of A students live there. [Communal apartments – hostel-style apartment where every room has a different owner; a bathroom, a kitchen, and a hallway are shared. The rooms may be owned or rented – RV]
40% of C students don’t communicate with their grandmothers and grandfathers.
73% of A students have over 200 books at home, but 75% of C students’ homes also own a lot of books, at least 100.
Families of 5% of A students and 6% of C students own large libraries.
Low-income families with up to 5,000 rubles a month per person have more A students than C. These families raise 26% of all C students and… 30% of all A students!
Families with an income of 20,000 rubles per person have almost the same number of both, A students and C students, 25% and 21% respectfully.
A lot more A and B students, 67% in elementary and 73% in middle and high school, live in families that always celebrate special family occasions. Most families of C students don’t celebrate their special occasions at all or rarely do so.
Sociologists noted a strong correlation: the higher a family’s income and the lower a family’s devotion to their special occasions – the lower the student’s grades, and vise versa: the better-celebrated the family’s special occasions are in middle- and low-income families – the better their students perform at school!
No tutors, special classes, or any amount of money spent on the students bring consistent good grades if there is no rapport and quality communication of students with their parents.
It seems interesting that 56% of A students’ parents have challenging and satisfying jobs and are happy professionally. As far as C students’ parents go, 80% of them “just work for the money,” according to their own words.
The research also found that contrary to popular belief, parents’ drinking in itself is not a determining factor for low grades. If the parents are strong enough to acknowledge drinking as a problem and try to do something about it, this positively impacts the student’s grades.
Olga Sachava concludes, “Family values directly impact a child’s academic success at school. The more value adults place on their family relationships, the more importance parents place on their family life (including relationships with the older generations), the more attention parents pay to building their inter-family relations – the higher the grades of their children are.
“Well-developed inter-family relations are a good sign of psychological competency of parents. Therefore, family relationships can be identified as the key academic success predictor.”
One more interesting dependency: the more content with their life parents are, regardless of income, the more success at school their children experience.
Do communicate with your relatives! Have family celebrations, love your job, appreciate your life, take it all in with joy – and your children will do great in school!
Russian source: http://ivan4.ru/news/semeynye_tsennosti/kak_uspevaemost_v_shkole_zavisit_ot_semeynykh_tsennostey_porazitelnye_vyvody_sotsiologov/
Link active as of January 27, 2017. RV