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Parental qualification
Students were asked to indicate their parents’ highest level of education against a list of nationally appropriate educational levels to ensure local relevance. Each of these levels was also mapped to International Standard Classification Levels (ISCED 2011) so that consistent comparisons across countries could be made.
Highest levels of parental education
As seen in Table STT1.4, 71% of students reported at least one of their parents’ highest levels of education was above secondary education and 52% of students had at least one parent with a university education.
University-level parental education and student performance
This information was compared with student achievement in the PILNA assessments. To simplify the analysis, parents’ highest level of education was grouped into two categories: below university level and university level. Table STT1.5 shows student performance in the PILNA domains by their parents’ highest level of education.
From Table STT1.5 we see that year four students who have at least one parent with a university level education or above have higher performance scores in all PILNA domains – numeracy, reading, and writing – than year four students who do not.
At year six level, students who have at least one parent with a university level education or above tended to perform better in the writing domain than students who do not have a parent with this level of education. No associations were found at year six level in numeracy or reading.
What does this mean?
Most students in Small Island States have parents who have a qualification above secondary education. About half of these students have a parent with a university level education.
Year four students with at least one university educated parent tended to perform better in all PILNA domains. Year six students with at least one university educated parent tended to perform better in the writing domain, but there were no associations found in the numeracy or reading domains. This may suggest that higher levels of parental education are associated with higher student performance, but that these differences are more visible at the lower year levels. It may also be that parental education supports better writing performance across the year levels.
