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How children of CEOs or parents who went to university perform better at school

Children born to university-educated lawyers and chief executives get better school results than those whose parents are baristas and cleaners in Queensland.

And the inequity passed down through generations does not seem to fade as children get older, exclusive analysis of NAPLAN results reveals.

What a child’s parents do for work is one of the biggest determinants of how they perform at school.

What a child’s parents do for work is one of the biggest determinants of how they perform at school.Credit: Erin Jonasson

Despite the stress some parents go through to pay for private schooling, or secure an overpriced house in the catchment area of a prestigious state school, children whose parents have a bachelor degree continue to trounce peers whose parents did not finish high school.

Children whose parents have a better paying job, for example senior executives, doctors or lawyers also outperform children whose parents work as a waiter, machine operator, labourer or miner.

The gap in average NAPLAN scores is evident across years 3, 5, 7 and 9 and across every subject – reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy – showing the benefits of having educated, wealthy parents do not fade as a child gets older in Queensland.

In fact, some of the biggest gaps in average scores were in Year 9, with a difference of 108.6 points in the grammar and punctuation test between children whose parents had a bachelor degree or above (589.8 points) versus those whose parents’ highest level of education was Year 11 or below (481.2).

The results were even worse for children whose parents had not been in paid work for the previous 12 months.

But of course, there are many factors at play, and affluent families who have attended university have more access to expensive private schools and tutors, or can afford to buy a house in a particular catchment zone.

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A study from the University of New York found children from families of higher socioeconomic status had better language abilities at nursery school age, which boosted their later academic performance as teenagers, while another study found highly educated parents ensured their children had places at top-performing secondary schools, which had better resources.

Australian National University Professor Ben Edwards said the NAPLAN data showed an interest in learning and education was “contagious”.

“There’s motivation, there’s having the capacity and the time to spend with your child supporting their education, reading to them at early ages,” he said.

“And then also, there may well be some basic ability thrown into the mix in terms of if you have parents who have a stronger aptitude for school work.”

Edwards said university-educated parents may have had a positive experience at school, with their children growing up in families where education was valued.

“Family factors are much stronger determinants of educational outcomes than schooling,” he said.

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