Academic achievement of Ugandan sixth grade students: influence of parents’education levels

Abstract

The study investigates the influence of a father and mother’s education on the academic achievement of their child. The investigation is based on data sourced from the 2009 Southern African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality survey comprising 5,148 records of sixth grade students enrolled in Ugandan primary schools. Students’ percentage scores in the health sciences, reading, and numeracy tests were adopted as a measure of academic achievement. The analysis was carried out using summary statistics and a multiple linear regression clustered by six geographical regions in Uganda: central, eastern, western, northern, southwestern, and North Eastern. In addition to father and mothers’ education, students’ test scores in the various disciplines were analysed by the characteristics of age, sex, rural-urban residence, grade repetition status (any grade), and length of pre-primary education. The results showed that the level of a father’s education required to predict whether the child will achieve better scores in all disciplines was primary education. However, a mother required secondary and post-secondary education to enable the child to obtain better scores in reading and numeracy, respectively. Much of the previous literature has suggested that children born to educated parents have higher academic achievement; the results of this study support this finding but also reveal a difference in the levels of a father and mother’s education required to predict their child’s achievement of better scores in formal education.