Parental Involvement as a Key-Determinant for Equal Educational Chances: Evidence from Seven South Eastern European Countries

This research highlights the determinants of parental involvement, and the role of parental involvement in generating educational outcomes for children across seven countries from South East Europe(3): Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldavia and Romania. A unique dataset, collected as a part of the 2009 Cross-National Survey of Parents in South East European (SEE) countries, was used (N = 7,776 parents). We applied Epstein's theory regarding parental involvement and used logistic regression for the statistical tests. The results indicated that parental expectations regarding a child's future education are highly relevant for expected school attainment; at the same time, parental involvement in the form of participation in class meetings or the perceived obligation to offer support to children doing homework had no significance for variations in child achievement. We discuss the potential reasons for the differences between the effects of the two dimensions of parental involvement on pupil's attainment in school. Our results suggest that policies which seek equal opportunities in education should focus more on parental expectations as a crucial determinant of school performance. In other words, such policies should offset the effects of variations in parental expectations. Other outstanding results are that Montenegro and Albania are exceptions from the aforementioned findings and the correlation between parents' expectations and children's attainment in school is strongest in Romania, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. These results are worth further research.