Parents’ (dis)satisfaction with schools: evidence from longitudinal administrative data from Spain

ABSTRACT

This study uses longitudinal census data to explore the correlates of school satisfaction among parents of 3rd and 6th grade students from the Canary Islands, a large administrative region in Spain. We use logistic regression to model parental dissatisfaction with their children’s school and teachers. Our results illustrate how parents value academic performance in reading and mathematics equally, while also placing equal emphasis on the development of cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Yet, we find that what matters the most to parents is their children’s happiness at school, rather than their educational progress. We also find that teachers may be able to improve parental satisfaction by providing regular feedback to parents about their children’s progress. Lastly, we discuss some implications for schools to meet parental needs; for example, schools should promote activities such as specialised workshops for parents on various topics ranging from child development to emotional development, stress management and self-confidence.

KEYWORDS:

• Satisfaction and happiness
• educational progress
• non-cognitive outcomes

JEL CODES:

• I20
• I21
• I28

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the data provided by the Agencia Canaria de Calidad Universitaria y Evaluación Educativa (ACCUEE).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Other research argued that parents can choose the best schools for their children. Bast and Walberg (2004) established the hypothesis supporting this premise.

2 “Ley Orgánica 2/2006, de 3 de mayo, de Educación, Título II, Capítulo III” is devoted to the national school admission process.

3 “Decreto 61/2007, de 26 de marzo, por el que se regula la admisión del alumnado de enseñanzas no universitarias en los centros docentes públicos y privados concertados de la Comunidad Autónoma de Canarias, Capítulo III” specifies the regional school admission criteria.

4 The school principal stated that school admission based on residence is used “always” or “sometimes”.

5 In addition, a further 923 observations are dropped from our analysis when our analytic models include school fixed-effects, due to a lack of variability in the outcomes.

6 The reliability of the indexes using Cronbach’s Alpha are 0.92 (satisfaction with school) and 0.95 (satisfaction with teacher), respectively.

7 The percentage of the variance explained by the first component is: 62.16% (satisfaction with the school) and 84.35% (satisfaction with teacher), respectively.

8 As a robustness check, we used reading test scores distribution within each school, instead of mathematics test scores.

9 This variable is based on the full sample of students who took the test in mathematics in 6th grade.

10 The tests for difference of coefficients reject the null hypothesis of equality of coefficients in Table 4 for all the specifications ($H_0$: Academic achievement score grade 6 = Student happiness at school score grade 6). The p-values of the test for each specification are: 0.00 for all specifications in panel a (M1, M2, M3 and M4); 0.007 (panel b, M1); 0.00 (panel b, M2, M3 and M4).

11 The tests for difference of coefficients accept the null hypothesis in Table 5 for all the specifications. ($H_0$: Academic achievement score grade 6 = Student math self-confidence grade 6). The p-values of the test for each specification are: 0.98 (M1, panel a), 0.75 (M2, panel a), 0.48 (M3, panel a), 0.11 (M1, panel b), 0.57 (M2, panel b) and 0.59 (M3, panel b).

12 p-Values for the test of equality of coefficients ($H_0$: Academic achievement score grade 6 = Student reading self-confidence grade 6) for each specification are: 0.0054 (M1, Table E3), 0.0092 (M2, Table E3), 0.0787 (M3, Table E3), 0.0338 (M1, Table E4), 0.4726 (M2, Table E4) and 0.5545 (M3, Table E4).

13 Gibbons and Silva (2011) used the following questions to measure pupil wellbeing: unhappiness at school (“I am happy when I am at school”), boredom in lessons (“I am bored in lessons”) and disliking teachers (“I like my teachers”) answered with a four-point scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree).

Additional information

Funding

This work has been partly supported by FEDER (Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regiona) funding (under Research Project PY20-00228-R), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (under Research Project PID2020-119471RB-I00), Andalusian Regional Government (SEJ-645).