A study to assess the relationship between parental involvement and academic performance of school age children in schools of Pune city

Abstract

Aim: The Study is to assess the Relationship between Parental involvement and Academic performance of School age children in schools of Pune city. Methods: A quantitative approach was adopted to conduct this study and the design used was non experimental exploratory research design. A non-probability convenient sampling technique was used for generating necessary data a self-structured questionnaire was developed which consisted of 30 questions on a 5-point scale. Questionnaire was confined to the areas of Epstein’s six different types of involvement which included parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making and collaborating with community and Parental involvement opinionative was developed and referring to the ‘No child left behind Act’ (NCLB). A final study was carried out on 300 parents of school age children (8-12 years of age) studying between classes III to class VII. Based on the objectives, the data was analyzed by using various statistical tests such as percentage, mean, standard deviation, Mann Whitney and ANOVA. Results: Findings of this study revealed that out of 300 samples, 295 parents have shown full parental involvement in academic performance of their child, 5 of them showed partial involvement and no one showed any involvement in academic performance of their child. Findings of distribution of children according to academic performance shows that, 178 children were having good academic performance and 118 were having average academic performance and 4 of them shown poor academic performance and needs supervision. The association between parental involvement and children’s academic performance in study group is that there is no association between parental involvement and academic performance in study group as ‘p’ value is greater than 0.05. The association between parental involvement and children’s academic performance with the selected demographic variables shows that there is highly significant difference of parental involvement of child according to child age in study group i.e. p <0.005 and no significant difference of academic performance of child according to child age, in study group i.e. p >0.05. There is no significant difference of parental involvement and academic performance of child according to birth order, class in study group i.e. p >0.05 and significant difference of academic performance according to class in study group i.e. p <0.05. Interpretation and Conclusion: After the detailed analysis, the study leads to the conclusion that there is no significant difference between the parental involvement and academic performance of the child. This indicated that other than parental involvement, factors such as nutrition, socio-economic status, role of teachers, School environment etc. will be responsible for the good academic performance of the child in the school.