The impact of parental involvement, parental support and family education on pupil achievement and adjustment: A literature review

Author: Professor Charles Desforges with Alberto Abouchaar

Institution: Commissioned by DfES now DfE

Full reference: Desforges C., with Abouchaar, A., (2003). The Impact of Parental Involvement, Parental Support and Family Education on Pupil Achievement and Adjustment: A Literature Review. DfES Research Report 433, 2003

Summary of key findings

This review of English language literature was conducted to establish research findings on the relationship between parental involvement, parental support and family education on pupil achievement and adjustment in schools.

In this review parental involvement is taken to include the quality of parenting in the home (including the provision of a secure and stable environment, intellectual stimulation, parent-child discussion, good models of constructive social and educational values and high aspirations relating to personal fulfillment and good citizenship) as well as the extent of parental contact with the school (contact with schools to share information; participation in school events; participation in the work of the school; and participation in school governance).

The extent and form of parental involvement is strongly influenced by family social class, maternal level of education, material deprivation, maternal psycho-social health and single parent status and, to a lesser degree, by family ethnicity.

The most important finding from the point of view of this review is that parental involvement in the form of ‘at-home good parenting’ has a significant positive effect on children’s achievement and adjustment even after all other factors shaping attainment have been taken out of the equation. In the primary age range the impact caused by different levels of parental involvement is much bigger than differences associated with variations in the quality of schools. The scale of the impact is evident across all social classes and all ethnic groups.

The achievement of working class pupils could be significantly enhanced if we systematically apply all that is known about parental involvement. A programme of parental involvement development initiatives taking the form of multi dimensional intervention programmes, targeted on selected post code areas and steered by a design research process is implicated.

Research questions & methodology

This literature review is based around the following questions:

What are the main findings/conclusions of research that has investigated the relationship between parenting (in terms of parental support, family learning, parental involvement and parents’ level of education) and pupil achievement/engagement? Where are there agreements and inconsistencies, as well as gaps in these finding?

What elements of parental support, family learning, parental involvement and parents’ level of education impact positively on pupil achievement/engagement?

What strategies/interventions have been successfully used (nationally and internationally) to enable parental support, family learning, parental involvement and parents’ level of education to have a positive impact on pupil achievement/engagement?

To what extent can those strategies/interventions, which effectively enable parental support, family learning and parental involvement to have a positive impact on pupil achievement, be deliberately targeted to address the achievement gap – particularly towards hard-to-reach parents?

To what extent does the timing of interventions impact positively or negatively? For example, what is the evidence for/against intervention from birth? What evidence is there that later interventions (e.g. at Key Stage 1, 2 or 3) have equal/lesser/greater impact?

Read the review.