The effect of parental education attainment on school outcomes

Abstract

This paper analyzes whether there exists a causal relationship between parental educational attainment and student outcomes or success. The research was carried out on 260 students, teachers and parents from six randomly selected secondary schools in three local government areas of Ogun state, Nigeria. The Junior Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations (JSSCE) performance were used as variables for measuring school outcomes while less than bachelor‘s degree as well as bachelor‘s degree or its equivalent to PhD were used to measure parental educational attainment. Two null hypotheses were developed and Chi square statistics was used to analyse its findings. Parental education attainment was discovered to have a significant and fundamental effect on school outcomes.