Education Summit: Don't Put Expectations for Schools too high - Parents more Important for Success in Education and on Labour Market

The education summit in Berlin is an important signal to no longer accept the growing inequality of chances in education and on the labour market. "It must be discussed what investments in the educational system should be made to achieve the best outcome with the means used. In particular, the fact that the families are more important for success in education and on the labour market than school has to be considered", explains Dr. Friedhelm Pfeiffer, senior researcher at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim. Pfeiffer is coordinating the Leibniz network "Non-Cognitive Skills: Acquisition and Economic Consequences".

A current study conducted by ZEW in cooperation with the Central Institute of Mental Health (ZI) in Mannheim indicates the great significance of families for a successful education and employment. For instance, the basic cognitive skills and motor abilities, like cognitive performance, reasoning power, basic problem-solving competence or language, are mainly developed in family situations. At best, primary school impacts these abilities as well. The situation is different for the basic non-cognitive skills, like endurance, motivation, persistence or self-regulation, which can be improved by both family and school. Moreover, the study shows that basic skills that were already developed in the family lead to significantly better grades in schools and increase the likelihood to enter the German secondary school, the so-called Gymnasium.

While transferring from primary school to secondary school, unprivileged children are lacking additional tangible assets. Tuition fees scare off this student group. However, the greatest disadvantage has already taken place earlier in childhood, when the capacities to learn are developed. This disadvantage cannot be compensated by simply waiving the tuition fees. Support for unprivileged children must start in the family and continue over a longer period until graduation from school. ZEW projections indicate that such investments make high profits over the life cycle and for the community. Demands for publicly funded life-long learning for adults are very frequent. “From an economic perspective, these public means could be saved in the long run if the skills for life-long learning were already developed in childhood and school,” Pfeiffer says.

There is a great variety of suggestions on how to improve the reform to decrease the inequality of educational and labour market success. This includes tuition fee waivers, opening up universities for students with sufficient work experience, improving teacher training, introducing a Germany-wide standardised school leaving examination, so-called Abitur, as well as increasing individual support of unprivileged children. Pfeiffer says that, for all these suggestions, the responsible politicians had to take into account that not only the schools primarily impact on the educational and labour market success but also the around 11bn families in Germany. In the families, the opportunities and views on how the children are to develop skills differ immensely. Despite some improvements, the schools are still struggling to compensate these differences.

Within the pact on innovation and research, the Leibniz Association supports the network “Non-Cognitive Skills: Acquisition and Economic Consequences” coordinated by ZEW. This network focuses on researching the factors that influence the development of skills that are essential for success in school and on the labour market. Developing these skills already starts as a baby, or even as unborn baby. Early learning successes foster the further learning. Indeed, important basis skills are already developed long before starting kindergarten. The drawback of this finding is that early learning failures lead to further ill success. According to Pfeiffer, children that have disadvantages due to their psychosocial family background experience such ill successes at an early stage in life, for instance the lack of emotional support in their wish to develop competences. 

For further information please contact

PD Dr. Friedhelm Pfeiffer, Phone: +49/621/1235-150, E-mail: pfeiffer@zew.de