




































BECE. Newsletter 

Vol.7, No.2, 2021 1001 

 

 

 

 

Which is More Important, Schooling or Parenting? 

By Hu, Y., & Yuan, J. 
Correspondence to: Yongmei Hu, Professor, Faculty of Education, Beijing Nor-

mal University, China. Email: huym0718@bnu.edu.cn 

ASED on the questionnaire and assessment from elementary and middle 

schools in 16 cities of 5 provinces in eastern and central China, a study 

published in Journal of East China Normal University (Educational Science) 

explored the impact of parenting and schooling on students’ standardized test 

scores, through the hierarchical linear model (HLM). Also, the researchers 

employed Shapley and Owen decomposition method to identify the input 

factors that have a greater impact on school output. Furthermore, identify 

whether there are differences in the impact of parenting and schooling on 

primary school students and secondary school students’ academic perfor-

mance. Lastly, according to the results, several suggestions are listed. 

The study adopted academic performance as the dependent variable 

and set the input of parenting and schooling as independent variables. In the 

aspect of parenting input, parental participation and educational expectations 

act as the proxy variables of social capital, while the time of spending on pri-

vate supplementary tutoring acts as a proxy variable of economical capital. 

As for schooling input, the quality and quantity of teachers and school condi-

tions as proxy variables: 

 Parenting factors are more important for primary school students 

while schooling factors are more important for secondary ones. 

 Parental participation and educational expectation have significantly 

positive effects on students’ academic performance. What’s more, 

parental participation contributes more to the variance of average 

academic performance in primary schools, while parental education-

al expectation has a greater contribution to the variance of average 

academic performance in secondary schools. 

 In addition to the student-teacher ratio, school input factors such as 

school conditions and teacher quality have significantly positive ef-

fects on students’ academic performance. Comparing with school 

conditions, teacher quality contributes more to the variance of aver-

age academic performance in primary and secondary schools. More-

over, compared with primary schools, teacher quality has a greater 

contribution to the variance of average academic performance in 

secondary schools. 

B 



 

Vol.7, No.2, 2021 1002 

 

Source: Journal of East China Normal University (Educational Science), 

2021; 39(1):1-25. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 


