Relationship Between Parent Engagement And Student Academic Performance In High School

Purpose of Study

A number of studies conducted have hypothesized and proved that student performance is often susceptible to both individual and external influences. Factors such as student attitude towards a subject or teacher and the amount of time spent engaging in personal study have been directly linked to student performance. Liddell et al. (2004) on their paper on student attitudes and their academic performance support the theory of attitude having an effect on student performance. Elsewhere, Singh (2011) states that often “…

Achievement motivation is the need to perform well…” he further argues that such a motivation is related to a student’s discipline. Other factors that are hypothesized to affect student performance are socio-economic and family background. In a study conducted by Adrian, Kamilla and Marc on the effect of guardian engagement on student performance, they note that there is mixed outcomes on parental behavioral change upon attendance of academic meetings, however they note no effect on the performance of the student.

1.1 Scope of study

This paper will focus on the performance of high school students owing the role played by parents in their academic life through attendance of school meetings and meeting the student wards. It will examine whether there exists a relationship between the dependent variable (student performance) and the independent variables (parent activities)

1.2 Purpose of study

To determine the relationship between parent engagement in student academic life with the student’s academic performance

1.3 Research Questions

There are three sets of questions designed for this study which aid in research specificity to the purpose, they include:

1. Does the length of parent meeting with teachers affect the student performance
2. Is there a relationship between the student attitude together with parent meeting with student performance

• Is there any relationship between factors that influence academic performance and academic achievement of students?

1.Methodology

2.1 Data

The dataset for this study is developed from secondary sources from previous studies conducted on the role of parents in a students’ academic life. There are two dependent variables, i.e. Mathematics score and Chemistry score measured before and after parent meeting with student wards. The independent variables include:

1. Attitude of student
2. Length of the meeting (duration that the meeting took)

• Number of parents that attended the meetings

The data is coded such that parent attendance takes the value 1 if present and 0 if absent. The variable of attitude of student assumes 1 if positive, 2 if moderate and 3 if negative, whereas the length of meeting is measured in hours.

2.2 Research instruments

The statistical package for social sciences is used as the data analysis tool for the research project.

2.3 Process

To examine the underlying structure of the data so as to enable hypothesis testing, the research is designed to employ inferential statistical analysis using the ordinary least squares regression as the statistical model. The study will also use descriptive statistical analysis to explore the distribution of the various variables and report on the results using both visualization tools and tables together with the analysis.

2.4 Hypotheses

There are two sets of hypotheses to enable answering of the research questions:

Null hypothesis 1

H₀: The length of parent meeting with teachers has a positive effect on student performance

Alternative hypothesis 1

H_a: The length of parents’ meeting with teachers has no significant effect on student academic performance

Null hypothesis 2

H₀: Academic performance is affected by combination of individual and external factors

Research Questions

H_a: Academic performance is not affected by any factor be it individual or external

Data results and Data Analysis

3.1 Descriptive statistics

From table 1 below, the total number of parents who attended the parent-teacher meetings are 81, the average amount of time spent by all the visiting parents to see the teachers is approximately 1 hour 20 minutes while from the statistics it is noted that most of the students have an indifference attitude.

Table 1: Summary Statistics

Table 2: Parent Summary Statistics

Parent attendance is 81 out of 104 indicating a percentage of 77.88%

Summary Statistics between dependent and independent variables

Table 3: Correlation table

From table 3, the variable with highest correlation is Parents and chemistry results at (0.998).

The p-value from table 4 for the length of meeting with teachers, has a value 0.986 which is greater than 0.05 at 5% significance level, we therefore reject hypothesis 1 and conclude that the length of parent meeting with teachers has no effect on the student performance, (Williams et al., 2010). Additionally, from the coefficient table, all the independent variables when regressed against results have p-values greater than 0.005, we therefore reject the second null hypothesis and conclude that the explored factors do not affect the student performance jointly. I.e. in the data, attitude is widely of average and hence could not influence the statistics.

Conclusion

From the study, it is realized that there is no relationship between the lengths of time spent by parents when visiting teachers. In addition, the hypothesis test of the relationship for combination of the three factors (Parents, attitude, length of time) has no significant influence on the independent variable (Results, both of chemistry and Mathematics). Therefore it can be generalized that, despite there being a positive correlation between attitude and results, there is no statistical evidence to support causal. According to Krishna (2011).

on factors affect students’ performance, their point out to “…self motivation, family income, previous schooling, parents educational level…” as factors that influence the academic performance. In conclusion, parents’ attendance or non-attendance ought not to be an issue of concern when it comes to student performance. Nevertheless it is commendable to keep track of one’s child performance so as to ensure responsibility and discipline in the students.

Recommendations

Following the research on whether parent attendance of school meetings and attitude affect the performance of students, the following recommendations can be suitable in ensuring concentration of resources and energy on factors that influence performance:

1. Put in place better parental- student relationship structures so as to mitigate instances where the absence or inadequate parental monitoring and follow-up act as an error variable on other factors, for instance lack of parental attention may lead to issues of low-self esteem and, or indiscipline, (Aizer, 2004).
2. Explore other factors that are likely to influence the student performance and implement ways in which to maximize the benefits, i.e. encouraging self-motivation through rewarding students who perform well as well as those who improve academically, (Walker et al., 2011).

• School administration should ensure only necessary meetings between, teachers; students and parents (together) are sanctioned. Unnecessary meetings are likely to cause attention disruption among students and end up not serving the purpose of advancing student performance, (Northouse, 2007).

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