Geert Driessen

Parental Involvement and Educational Achievement

Parental involvement is seen as an important strategy for the advancement of the quality of education. The ultimate objective of this is to expand the social and cognitive capacities of pupils. In addition, special attention is paid to the children of low-educated and ethnic minority parents. Various forms of both parental and school-initiated involvement are examined. On the one hand, the connections between a number of characteristics of parents and schools such as the social and ethnic background of the parents and the composition of the school population will be examined. On the other hand, the connections between a number of outcome measures such as the language and mathematics skills of the pupils will be examined. Data will be drawn from the large-scale Dutch PRIMA (primary education) cohort study, which contains information on more than 500 schools and 12,000 pupils in the last year of primary school and their parents. An important finding is that predominantly schools with numerous minority pupils appear to provide a considerable amount of extra effort with respect to parental involvement, but that a direct effect of such involvement cannot be demonstrated.

Ethnicity, Forms of Capital, and Educational Achievement

Bourdieus cultural capital thesis is an attempt to explain how social class influences the transmission of educational inequality. In this article, the question of the extent to which various forms of capital also apply to ethnic minorities stands central. On the basis of Dutch and American research findings, a model is formulated and empirically tested with the aid of data from the Dutch Primary Education cohort study. Students from four ethnic groups are included: Dutch, Surinamese, Turkish, and Moroccan. The main variables are language and math test scores, socio-economic milieu, and a number of capital indicators, including financial resources, linguistic resources, parental reading behavior, and educational resources within the family. The results show no mediating effect of resources within the various ethnic groups. The findings also suggest that in research and practice it is relevant to not treat ethnic groups as one homogenous group, but to differentiate between the various groups.

School composition and achievement in primary education: A large-scale multilevel approach

Introduction In most large Western cities, the consequences of the concentration of socio- economic and ethnic underclasses in certain city sections are becoming increasingly visible (Wilson. 1987). In the USA, ghettoes are an established fact; in other countries, such as the UK and the Netherlands. the chances of such ghettoes developing in the near future are considered very real (Ogbu, 1994; Tesser, van Praag, Dugteren, Herweijer, & van der Wouden, 1995). These developments have far-reaching consequences in numerous social domains. The situation can be characterized as a concentration of unemployment. poverty, criminality, corruption, lack of norms and hopelessness. Education should occupy a key position with regard to improving the opportunities for exactly such groups in society. It is, however, clearly evident that the quality of the schools in such neighbourhoods often leaves much to be desired for a number of reasons. There is usually a lack of financial resources, and thus of opportunities to attract highly-qualified teachers and purchase adequate materials (Rossi & Montgomery, 1994; Tomlinson, 1997). It is difficult for teachers to motivate pupils and remain motivated themselves within a context in which hopelessness pervades and the utility of an education is simply not recognised. In addition “white flight” and “black flight” are increasingly relevant terms with regard to such neighbourhoods: Whenever the opportunity occurs, the few remaining non-minorities flee to other neighbourhoods and schools which present better perspectives for their children; the better

The Limits of Educational Policy and Practice? The case of ethnic minorities in The Netherlands

This article describes the situation in the field of ethnic minorities and education in The Netherlands and other Western countries. The policy that has been and is being pursued in The Netherlands is central to this article, as well as the way in which this policy has been translated into practice. The most important aim of the policy is to combat educational disadvantages among minorities. Attention is paid to the evaluation of the various aspects related to the education offered to minorities. These evaluations show that even though a great deal has been brought about, policies have up until now hardly succeeded in improving the relative position of the minorities. On the basis of these findings, a number of changes have recently come about in the policy, that are likely to have far-reaching consequences for educational practice. To conclude this article attention is paid to this new policy.

A large‐scale longitudinal study of the utilization and effects of early childhood education and care in The Netherlands

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) services are expected to make an important contribution to the prevention of educational disadvantages stemming from social–ethnic factors. In the present study, three services are central: daycare centers, preschools, and special parent–child programs. Whether or not relations exist between the utilization of ECEC services and a number of the characteristics of the parent and the child is examined initially. Thereafter, the effects of such participation in ECEC services on the cognitive and non‐cognitive competencies of the children involved are examined. The recent data from the Dutch cohort study Elementary Education involving a total of approximately 33,500 students from 600 elementary schools are analyzed. The results show significant relations between the utilization of ECEC services and such parent characteristics as education, ethnic origin and paid employment. With regard to the effects of participation in ECEC services, only very weak associations with the cognitive and non‐cognitive competencies of the children are detected but they disappear when the relevant background characteristics of the parents are taken into consideration.

Islamic schools in three western countries: policy and procedure

In this article, the authors compare Islamic schools in three countries: the United States, the Netherlands, and Belgium. In each country, the authors take care to situate Islamic schools within the broader context of educational policy and practice. In particular, the authors examine the mechanisms for funding, choice and control, noting that for reasons specific to each context monitoring either by the state or accrediting agencies poses both challenges and opportunities for Islamic schools.

Religion, Denomination, and Education in The Netherlands: Cognitive and Noncognitive Outcomes After an Era of Secularization

After 1850, The Netherlands developed into a strongly pillarized or denominational society. Starting in 1965, however, a process of secularization and depillarization emerged and the influence of the institutionalized denominations declined greatly. Today, there are indications that the process of secularization has reached its peak. Remarkably enough, such secularization and depillarization has had little influence on the educational system in The Netherlands. In this article, the relations between the religious affiliations of parents, the denominations of the schools attended by their children, and both the cognitive and noncognitive educational achievement of their children are examined. A representative sample of nearly 8,400 kindergarten students from 432 elementary schools is studied. The results show that the denomination of the school does not appear to affect educational results. Effects of the religious affiliation of the parents on the cognitive achievement but not the self-confidence or well-being of their children were found. When the socioethnic background of the students was taken into consideration, however, the observed effects disappeared.

Educational Opportunities in the Netherlands: Policy, Students' Performance and Issues

Since 1985 the Educational Priority Policy (EPP) has been in effect in the Netherlands. This policy is aimed at reducing the educational disadvantage of children due to their social, economic and cultural circumstances. The first section of this article describes the outlines of the EPP. The second section presents the results of an EPP evaluation study conducted in secondary education among 20,000 students from nearly 400 schools. The emphasis is on test performance in relation to three student characteristics: gender, social class and ethnic background. The analyses show that the test results are largely determined by social class. Gender hardly plays a role, while the influence of ethnic origin is also limited. It should however be added that the performance of two migrant groups, the Turks and Moroccans, is the worst of all. As most Turks and Moroccans belong to the lowest socioeconomic category, the factor of ethnic origin is so closely interwoven with the factor of social class, that it is not really possible to distinguish the two. In the final section of the article these findings are related to three theoretical perspectives regarding the explanation of differences in educational performance. This is followed by a discussion on possible consequences for the EPP.

Effects of Immigrant Parents' Participation in Society on Their Children's School Performance

Integration of ethnic minorities into society is often operationalized as participation in various societal institutions. Examples are cultural, political and labour participation. On the basis of the theoretical concepts of social and cultural capital as proposed by sociologists Bourdieu and Coleman, it is often hypothesized that greater parental participation in society will generally lead to a better educational position for the children of such parents. To test this hypothesis, descriptive and multi-level analyses were conducted using data from the Dutch cohort study Primary Education. The sample included information on nearly 11,000 kindergarten students (6-year-olds) from almost 600 primary schools. In the analyses, ethnic minority parents and their children were compared to native Dutch parents and their children. After controlling for parental socio-economic and ethnic background, the results showed an effect of cultural participation only on language and mathematics skills. No effects on non-cognitive outcomes, such as social position, individual well-being or self-confidence, were found.

The effects of integration and generation of immigrants on language and numeracy achievement

In many Western countries the pressure exerted on immigrants to integrate has become intense in recent years. Efforts to preserve their ethnic identity through multicultural recognition has now been replaced by the requirements of active civic participation and assimilation. Of course integration is considered important not only for the immigrant parents but also for their children. The central question in this article is whether there is a relationship between the degree of integration of the immigrant parents and the generation of their children on the one hand and the level of language and numeracy achievement of the children on the other. To answer this question we use data collected in 2008 from the Dutch COOL5–18 cohort study. The information comes from more than 9000 immigrant and 16,000 indigenous children and their parents. The results show that as immigrant parents are better integrated and their children are of later generations, the language and numeracy skills of the children improve, though there remain large differences in achievement between different ethnic groups.