Family Education Improves Student's Academic Performance: Contributions from European Research

There is a wide body of literature about the relation between families' education and students' academic performance. Several contributions have focused its analysis on describing the gap between children of academic families and non-academic families, especially those with low socioeconomic status from underprivileged neighbourhoods. These kinds of conclusions have had an impact on educational actions which start from the point that children from non academic and underprivileged families are condemned to school failure. Findings from a large-scale European research project on schooling are refuting these conclusions. This research has provided evidences on those types of family and community participation that are contributing to educational success. This paper presents one of these types of participation, which is family education as a Successful Educational Action (SEA) that is improving students' performance by creating learning spaces between families and students where cultural and educational interactions are shared. Data provided here illustrates how these interactions contribute to accelerate children's learning.