Parents inclined to invest more, if child attends better quality school

Parents consider that spending money on learning resources such as books, educational games and private tuition for their children is more productive if the child attends a higher quality school, according to new research led by UCL. The study, which recently came out as a Human Capital and Economic Opportunity ( HCEO) Working Paper, was funded by the Nuffield Foundation. It found that parents believe that if their child attends a higher quality school, they would benefit more from material investments made by their parents in terms of having a higher earning potential at age 30.  "Given that children from wealthier backgrounds are also more likely to attend better schools, the relationship parents perceive between school quality and material investments might contribute to the low social mobility in England," said co-author Dr Teodora Boneva (UCL Economics). It has been widely documented that parental investments are highly predictive of important life outcomes such as educational attainment, earnings and health. However, time and financial resources which parents allocate towards their children vary considerably across families.  "The fact that some parents invest less in their children than others is not necessarily a consequence of having less time or money. Differences are also likely to be driven by differences in parental beliefs about the returns to parental investments. The results of our study are important as they help us to identify bottlenecks which prevent parents from investing in their children," added Dr Boneva.