Parents’ and students’ gender-interaction: the effect of parental expectations

Abstract

The study of the effect on students’ academic achievement of their parents’ expectations has been widely explored; nevertheless, most of the existing evidence for the Spanish case is purely correlational and subject to endogeneity, due to the lack of longitudinal information. The current research intends to provide further insight into this subject by analysing whether parental expectations play a relevant role in determining students’ progression from primary to secondary education, and the use of time fixed effects let to deal with the mentioned problems. This progression is studied by analysing the effect of parental expectations on students’ academic achievement and their likelihood of grade repetition. In addition, all possible interactions between parents’ and children’s genders are explored to study this issue.