Influence of Family Resources on Educational Success of Students

The study contains an analysis of the effect of mother education in groups of families with different or equal levels of education on the education progress of schoolchildren. The effect of mother education is considered in three groups: mother education is higher than father's education; the education of the father is greater than that of the mother; the education of parents is on the same level. The analysis was carried out on the basis of cross-sectional data from the TIMSS database: the data for the year 2015 (sixth wave), for the eighth-grade students, the total sample contains 4781 observations. Based on the estimates of OLS regression it was found that the effect of maternal education is different depending on the similarity of parent’s educational levels compared, all coefficients are significant at 1% level. The coefficient is 0.11 in the group where the father's education is greater than the mother, 0.08 in the group of families with equal education, 0.06 in families where the education of the mother exceeds the education of the father. The effect of the mother's education on student performance was greatest in the group of families where the father's education exceeds the mother's education. The constructed model as a whole is significant at the 1% level and accounts for 29.1% of the variance of the dependent variable. This study contributes to the study of factors that influence the success of schoolchildren and provides an opportunity for further research in this area.