Parental Socio-Economic Status and their Children’s Primary Education: A Comparative Study on Santal and Oraon Communities in Rural Bangladesh

Abstract

Purpose of the study was to explore and examine the relationship of parental socio-economic status (e.g. education, occupation and annual family income) and their children’s primary education (viz. first enrollment, attendance and performance) between Santal and Oraon communities in rural Bangladesh. In so doing, this study hypothesized that better achievement of Oraon children’s primary education than the Santal ones was significantly associated with their higher parental socio-economic status than the Santal parents’ in rural Bangladesh. In order to examine the hypothesis a total of 180 parents (90 for Oraon and 90 for Santal) and their primary school-going children with class 3, class 4 and class 2 were selected through simple random sampling. Pearson’s Chi-Squire test and partial correlation techniques were applied to find out similarities or differences in and associations between parental socio-economic statuses and children’s primary education between Santal and Oraon communities in the study villages of Bangladesh. Pearson Chi-Squire test suggested that frequency distributions of parental educational status (X2 =24.56, p= .006 for father’s education and X2 =16.63, p= .034 for mother’s education) and annual family income except parental occupational statuses (X2 = 8.24, p= .083 for father’s occupation and X2 = 3.67, p= .299 for mother’s occupation) were significant differences (X2 = 78.02, p= .000) at p<0.05 level. Likely, the frequency distributions of first enrollment age (X2 = 25.57, p= .000) at p<0.01 level, class attendance (X2 = 80.85, p= .002) and class performance were significant differences (X2 = 25.73, p= .000) were significantly different between the two communities at p<0.01 level. Result of Partial Co-relation coefficients suggested that parental socio-economic status, especially parents education, occupation and yearly family income were not related to age of first enrollment but negatively related to class attendance (r2= -.212, p=.005). It was interesting to note that parental education ((r2= -.144, p=.057) and income (r2= .191, p=.011) positively related to educational performance between the two communities in study area. The present research clearly showed that there were significant associations between parental SES (e.g. education, occupation and income) and children’s primary education (e.g. enrollment, attainment and performance). Based on the findings social policy-makers may reformulate social policy and programs to provide social and economic support to the poor parents to enhance their children’s primary education in which social development is realized and social change is accelerated in rural Bangladesh.