Relations between Early Educational and Family Experiences and Academic Outcomes of Elementary School Students

Abstract

This article focuses on the issues of low academic results. Research on the role of children’s early educational experiences highlights the important role of kindergartens, socioeconomic status (SES[1]), cultural capital (CC[2]), and other family characteristics for future educational outcomes. The goal of this paper is to investigate the relationship of SES and CC with academic achievement of children in elementary school, using a sample of 5235 students of the first (n=2574) and fourth (n=2661) grades of secondary schools from the Nizhny Novgorod region of Russia. The academic results were measured using the “Start” and “Progress” tests; the information about family and educational experiences was collected using family surveys. The results suggest that children with low academic achievement typically reside in in rural areas and mostly come from families with low SES. The results indicated that in the fourth grade, the academic results of the children who didn´t attend a kindergarten are higher than the results of the children who did. Nevertheless, this result refers only to a sample of fourth graders with medium and high academic achievement, coming from families with high SES and CC. These results contradict the findings from Russian and foreign studies on the role of early educational experiences. Therefore, the results from this study should be interpreted with caution and require additional rigorous examination. [1] Socio-economic status includes such indicators as level of education of parents, place of residence, family wealth, etc. [17; 19]. [2] Cultural capital includes social attitudes, values, knowledge and educational qualifications [10].