Provide Education Chances to Children by Encouraging Their Parents
Undeniably, students’ academic performance differs widely because of their different backgrounds. Students who have a distinguished family background, no matter whether they have interests in learning, can be guaranteed to have study chances at least for compulsory education. The same is not certain when it comes to students from more disadvantaged backgrounds. Their background gives them little chance of achieving at school.
Several reasons that stop parents from sending their children to schools
Parental education is regularly identified as a vital factor that affects children’s academic success. Children who have highly educated parents are more likely to be educated at a younger age since their parents can read to them to enhance their early literacy skills and build their foundational content knowledge. Family income is also a known element that has an impact on children’s future academic outcomes. As Anna Egalite said in her blog, “an increase in family income received through one of the largest federal antipoverty programs has been shown to raise the achievement levels of children raised in low-income families” (Egalite, 2016). In other words, the lower the family income is, the less educational opportunity the child can get. Besides, the neighborhood in which a family resides also has an influence on children’s education since it has an indirect effect on the distance between schools and their families.
Ways to guarantee education for children by encouraging their parents
For parents with lower educational attainment, on some occasions, the problem is not the lack of money but a lack of motivation. They need to know that the gap of wages among various industries is becoming widened, especially in the Internet Age. Figure 1 shows the obvious gaps among salaries of students with different educational backgrounds in recent decades, and it can be a motivation to parents. This problem can be solved if parents realize that the increase in education investment to update their children’s skills can lead them to positions with higher salaries.
An effective measure to encourage parents who have financial burdens to send their children to school is to improve the system for giving financial aid to students from low-income families. With financial assistance, parents would attach more importance to education instead of pushing their children to work and make money at a very young age. For families who live in a neighborhood that is far from schools, a good choice for them is to form study groups among different families. Then, these students can get together for online learning. Besides, teachers can guide and supervise them from afar, drop in on discussions, and mark tests for them.
References
Egalite, A. (2016, September 13). The Link Between Family Background and Academic Success [web log]. https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-link-between-family-background-and-academic-success.
Valletta, R. (2015, January 20). Higher Education, Wages, and Polarization. The Big Picture. https://ritholtz.com/2015/01/higher-education-wages-and-polarization/.