A Study on Parental Involvement in Children’s Education in the Ger Districts of Mongolia

Abstract

  This paper aims to clarify the key factors that influence the parents or caregivers of primary school students in involving children’s education in poor urban areas in Mongolia, and to reveal the associations between the parents’ involvement and their capitals such as physical, human, and social capitals, and the parents’ aspiration for their children’s education.

  In the suburbs of Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, there are slum-like areas called Ger districts. In recent decades, a large number of younger ex-herder families have moved into Ger districts from the countryside after they had lost their livestock due to a severe cold climate. In these families, there are parents who did not have a chance to access to quality education since this generation had struggled with a difficult childhood derived from the country’s educational confusion after the introduction of a market economy in the 1990s. Currently, government services cannot meet the demands for infrastructure and education because of rapid population growth. In Ger districts, quality education is difficult to obtain since the number of schools and classrooms is insufficient and textbooks and learning materials are not provided to every student due to the government’s limited education budget. Regarding the educational environment, previous studies (e.g. Coleman, 1988) demonstrate that family capitals, including physical, human, and social capitals have associations with children’s educational attainment. There are also other studies about parental involvement in children’s education (e.g. Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 1997; Mayo and Siraj, 2014; See and Gorard, 2015; Jeynes, 2017), which greatly influences children’s educational trajectories. This study focuses on parental involvement in the families of lower socioeconomic status, because it has not been closely studied and it could find a solution to improving the quality of education in poor areas. If parents become more interested in their children’s education and encourage the children to pursue education, the educational situation in poor areas could be improved greatly.

  In this study, a questionnaire survey and a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2016. It focused on two districts, Chingeltei District (District C) and Songinokhairkhan District (District S), because these districts have larger populations compared to other districts. District C is an old Ger area. People started to migrate from the countryside and settled down in this area more than 30 years ago. Therefore, the second or third generations make up the majority of the population. On the other hand, District S is a relatively new area; thus the infrastructure and the social services are under developed compared to District C. The first generation is the District S’s major population. This study targeted ten primary schools to conduct a questionnaire survey for parents or caregivers of second and fifth graders. A total of 3,000 questionnaire sheets were distributed to ten schools with a response rate of 75.5% (2,264). To collect detailed information on educational situation in the Ger districts, this study also conducted semi-structured interviews of 10 primary school principals or managers.

  In order to clarify the association between parental involvement in education and the family capitals, parent’s educational aspiration, and years of residence; a logistic regression analysis and a multiple regression analysis were conducted. The family capitals are composed of parents’ employment status (if they have jobs), parents’ years of formal education, and the respondents’ social capital. This social capital was measured by the answers and divided into two stages, which are before and after children’s enrolment in primary school. (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)