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

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. The main results indicate that both higher fathers’ and mothers’ expectations increase students’ academic achievement and decrease their likelihood of grade repetition, although parents may be more demanding with girls’ level of education. These results have motivated the suggestion of many education policies.