Family involvements in education and quality of education: Some selected 2nd cycle public schools in west shoa zone, Ethiopia

Abstract In improving the quality of education, parents’ involvement is very significant. Parents’ involvement is one of the three responsibilities for realizing the best quality. This study attempts to explore parents’ involvement in education activities for improving their children’s academic achievement. A sample of 292 households was selected from whose students’ grade five to grade eight of four schools. Descriptive analysis showed that 19% of the respondents do not actively involve at all in giving advice, guiding, and counseling their children at home. 67% of the respondents showed medium parental involvement in helping their children, while 14% of respondents showed a good status of parental involvement in education at home. Similarly, the study revealed that 53% of the respondents were not participating in school activities at all and 35% of them were medium participation and 13% of them were well involved in school activities. The multiple linear regression revealed that the gender of the household head, educational level of the father, and sources of income of parents were found to be the major predictors of parents’ involvement in education for improving academic achievements while the aging of the head of the household, number of children and gender of students were not showing significance. Government, school leaders, and policymakers should explore mechanisms to increase parents’ involvement in students’ learning and make it obvious to parents their attitude toward their child’s academic performance.


Abstract:
In improving the quality of education, parents' involvement is very significant. Parents' involvement is one of the three responsibilities for realizing the best quality. This study attempts to explore parents' involvement in education activities for improving their children's academic achievement. A sample of 292 households was selected from whose students' grade five to grade eight of four schools. Descriptive analysis showed that 19% of the respondents do not actively involve at all in giving advice, guiding, and counseling their children at home. 67% of Reta Lemessa ABOUT THE AUTHORS Reta Lemessa has a Master's in Statistics from Addis Ababa University. He has more than 10 years of experience of Universities teaching, private research centers, and developmental institutions. Currently, Mr. Reta has working as Lecturer at Ambo University; in private research centre as data analysist. He has served as a lecturer at Wollega University, Ethiopia, and as head, of the department of statistics at Ambo University for three years since 2017. He has performed and published different themes of research. His research interests are the application of statistics in any type of data, spatial modeling, and binary and multilevel modeling. Endale Alemayehu is a researcher at Intego project department of public health and primary care, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium from September 2022. He has served as lecturer and head, department of statistics at Ambo University from 2018 before he joined Hasselt University to attend his master of statistics and data science as international scholar. He was appointed as a graduate assistant and assistant lecturer position from 2014 before he left for master of Biostatistics to Jimma University. His research interest included but not limited to Spatial modeling, Bayesian models, mixed model, application of distributed lag non-linear models and modeling heat wave. Temesgen Senbeto is senior lecturer at Ambo University in Department of Statistics. He has masters of Sciences in Biostatistics and Masters of Sciences in Developmental Economics. He has strong background of statistics and Economics.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Parental involvement is the most important children's academically and behavioral development. This indicated that parents left the responsibility solely to the teachers and directors. Therefore, the lack of parental participation resulted in low interaction, low school success, and low academic achievement. The lack of parental involvement at home and in school activities is disappointing. The study revealed that parental involvement in education at home and school has a great contribution to students' academic achievements. This implies that parents' involvement is education has relevant for quality of education. Attention to individuals with low socioeconomic backgrounds to preserve, economically and morally, to make consistency for the obtainable opportunity. Mechanisms of increasing parents' involvement in students' learning and make obvious to parents their attitude toward their child's academic performance.
the respondents showed medium parental involvement in helping their children, while 14% of respondents showed a good status of parental involvement in education at home. Similarly, the study revealed that 53% of the respondents were not participating in school activities at all and 35% of them were medium participation and 13% of them were well involved in school activities. The multiple linear regression revealed that the gender of the household head, educational level of the father, and sources of income of parents were found to be the major predictors of parents' involvement in education for improving academic achievements while the aging of the head of the household, number of children and gender of students were not showing significance. Government, school leaders, and policymakers should explore mechanisms to increase parents' involvement in students' learning and make it obvious to parents their attitude toward their child's academic performance.

Introduction
The three shared responsible for educational quality are; parents, government, and community are very considerable for realizing the best quality of education (Arifin, et al., 2019). The Epstein model of 1995 (Epstein, 1995) broadly deliberates on three overlapping environments that full fill the needs of the child in terms of development, growth, and learning. These three environments are the family, school, and community and, above all, they are intertwined and interlinked. In these environments, a parent's presence is requisite since a parent appears either as a parent/guardian, teacher/instructor, or a community member. Family is the first and the most important environment for a child because family is seen as the foundation for child education of children, and the primary responsibility of actual education rests in a family (Cheung et al., 2011) cited by Arifin, et al., (2016). Parental involvement in education is the communication made between parent and child about school (children report to their parents about their school activities), and between parent and school personnel (teacher) about a child's progress. Involvement in education with their children in school appears to be a crucial factor for the continuing educational development and success of children in school. Regular and good communication and partnership between teachers and parents are essential for consistent positive experiences both at home and in school (Chare et al., 2017, Nigussie, 2021. It does not only affect academic outcomes, non-academic outcomes such as students' school attendance and their behaviour and attitude towards school (Abera, 2018, Obeidat & Al-Hassan, 2009). Positive impacts of parental involvement on students' academic outcomes have not only been recognized by school administrators and teachers but also by policy-makers, who have interwoven different aspects of parental involvement in new educational initiatives and reforms (David et al., 2010;Jeynes, 2007, Graves, 2011. Parental involvement activities are highly beneficial for junior school students in families with low socio-economic status (SES).
Academic socialization is generally associated with academic success, whereas home-based involvement closely relates to school behavior. Future home-based interventions can be developed to promote parental involvement activities in low-SES families (Duan et al., 2018;Eshetu, 2015). Children's academic achievements differ from each other due to various factors like parents' education, occupation, income, and built-up area of the house (Tenaw, 2015, Gebeyehu & Kathiresan, 2016. Educational outcomes will be better when parents exert efforts with their children regarding their education at home and school affairs (Wulandary and Herlisa, 2017).
The parental involvement in education at home is justified by scholars liparent-childild communication on school matters, parents who actively invest time in making homework with their child, parents' attention in relation to the well-being ,of the child and parents who reward the educational achievements of their child (Hattie, 2008, Cabus & Ari€es, 2015. Parents play a significant role in supporting their children's health and learning, guiding their children successfully through school processes, and advocating for their children and for the effectiveness of schools. Epstein (1995) has studied the effects of parent involvement which they categorized into six major types: (1) parenting, (2) communicating, (3) volunteering, (4) learning at home, (5) decision-making, and (6) collaborating with the community on student academic achievement and behaviors.
Parents should be convinced of the competence of persons who are professionally involved in the work with their children. Effective partnerships require two-way communication that will enable the exchange of knowledge and ideas between all parties involved. Parental involvement provides an important opportunity for schools to enrich current school programs by bringing parents into the educational process. Increased parental involvement has been shown to result in increased student success, enhanced parent and teacher satisfaction, and improved school climate (Durisic & Bunijevac, 2017).
Positive impacts of parental involvement on students'student's academic outcomes have not only been recognized by school administrators and teachers but also by policy-makers who have interwoven different aspects of parental involvement in new educational initiatives and reforms (Graves, 2011Topor et al., 2010. Indeed, all parents have desired to do something better for their children according to their available resources. However, the extent and effectiveness of parental support depends on a variety of reasons, such as family income, home , environment and their awareness of the importance of education (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003;Nyarko, 2011).
To make education accessibility, equitable and to increase quality in order to reduce poverty by endowing every citizen with basic education. Thus, to attain this goal the government considers parental involvement in education in various aspects. In all spheres of learning, there is substantial research evidence that involvement of parents in their children's schooling gives a positive effect on their learning outcomes (Yigzaw, 2019, Yilmaz & Aktan, 2021. The lack of parental involvement at home and in school activities is disappointing. Hence, the scarcity of parents taking part in the school plan and intervening in sustaining their children's education at school and home is related to learners' low educational success (Kaya & Hasan, 2016). Some parents did become involved and were active in school matters to enhance their children's educational performance, but most parents did not regularly participate or observe the teaching-learning process (Hagos & Micheal, 2021;Kaya & Hasan, 2016). This indicated that parents left the responsibility solely to the teachers and directors. Therefore, the lack of parental participation resulted in low interaction, low school success, and low academic achievement.
In improving the quality of education, parents' involvement is very significant. Some studies have also shown that parents can play an important role in supporting their children's academic achievement (Naite, 2021). To what extent the parental involvement affects the children's academic performances? It has been found that socioeconomic factors at their household level also played a significant role in student's overall growth and development. It is rightly said that a child's learning starts from home which leaves an everlasting impact via his/her life. Getting parents involved in the education of their children in school appears to be a crucial factor for the continuing educational development and success of children in school.
Nowadays, children are becoming more career oriented. In order to develop in identity in the society, they are becoming more and more concerned about their academic achievements. Children's academic achievements differ from each other due to various factors like parents' education, occupation, income, and built-up area of house (M M Islam, 2014). This study attempts to explore parents' involvement in educational activities to improve their children's academic achievement. Furthermore, the study approached to answer for the following research questions.
• What degree of parental involvement in education to improve children performances?
• To what extent of parental involvements in academic activities of children affects students' performances at home and school?
• How the parental involvements in education correlated to students' performances to enhance quality of education?

The scheme of parental involvement
Parental involvement in their child's educational process is a topic of increasing interest to investigators. Hence, parental involvement is crucial to the improvement of children's educational successes at school and at home (Goshin & Tatyana, 2018;Hagos & Micheal, 2021). Since schooling is a compulsory part of life for children, high levels of parental involvement in a child's life connote parental involvement in a child's schooling as well. Many researches support the academic benefits for students when parents are highly involved in their children are schooling (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003). Parental involvement can be affected by several socio-political factors, such as socioeconomic condition and parents' negative school experience (Eshetu, 2015).

Importance of parental involvement in education
Parent involvement is also related to children's behavior in school. As parent involvement increases in the first, third, and fifth grades, children receive higher social skills ratings and show fewer problem behaviors. However, parent involvement in the areas of homework assistance, homeschool-communication, and participation in home-school conferences may increase when children are experiencing behavioral difficulties at school (El Nokali et al., 2010;Hoglund et al., 2015). In middle school, parent academic involvement in seventh grade was negatively associated with eighth grade behavioral problems. Over the course of middle and high school, provision of home structure and linking school material to the student's future were related to improving youths' problem behaviors. Academic socialization was found to have the strongest negative relationship with depression in high-school students (M. -T. Wang & Sheikh-Khalil, 2014). Parmar and Nathans (2022) identified in his study that parents' attendance at school meetings was positively associated with gains in boys' but not girls' test scores from grades 10 to 12. Parents' attendance at school events was positively associated with girls' gains in test scores between grades 10 to 12 but negatively associated with boys' gains. Parents' intervention at school was negatively associated only with boys' gains during that time. In general, it appeared that gains in girls' learning from grades 10 to 12 were more associated with verbal interaction and support, while boys' gains were more associated with control and guidance. This complex pattern of results suggested that gender plays an important role in how parent involvement impacts academic achievement.
Abraha, (2021) conducted a research that parents from a variety of cultural backgrounds and with different levels of education, income, or occupational status can and do provide stimulating home environments that support and encourage their children's learning. Students having one or two parents in the household are also thought to be important in determining educational achievement and outcomes. He found that students who are coming from a two-parent family have generally been shown to have a positive effect on educational outcomes and achievement, and occupation. Besides, parents' education levels have the largest and most consistent effect on student academic attainment. Students with one or two college-educated parents have higher levels of academic achievement than other students whose parents have no education. 2015) have conducted a research on parental homework involvement improves test scores. The main involvement of parents in the education of their children is the parent-child interaction at home. This interaction may consist of many different specific strategies, such as parent-child communication on school matters, parents who actively invest time in making homework with their child, parents' attention in relation to the well-being of the child and parents who reward the educational achievements of their child (Ariës & Cabus, 2015). The findings revealed that when parents are directly involved in assisting their children during homework tasks, then positive correlations were found throughout the literature, in particular when parents engage in metastrategies or support the child's understanding of homework. He concluded that parents need to be better informed on specific strategies that accommodate the student's need when assisting in homework tasks in order to improve achievements.
Parental involvement can help decrease dropout rates, increase school attendance, and improve overall motivation as well as relationships between students and their teachers. The findings that parent involvement predicted both academic achievement and behavior problems for boys' supports previous literature linking these variables. It also supported the work of Moon and Hofferth (2016), who found that home-based parental involvement impacted immigrant boys' but not girls' academic achievement.
According to 2021) parental participation in school activities was inadequate, and parents lacked the willingness and commitment to take part in parent-teacher meetings and parent's days; the voluntary involvement of parents in their children's education was low. Their finding found that most informant parents responded that they did not regularly discuss homework with their children, and they admitted their failure to check and sign their children's exercise books and supervise learning at home. Furthermore, they also could not help consistently with their homework, which resulted in their children not completing the homework.

Research design and participants
The study was done on four selected schools in west Shoa zone. Cross sectional study utilized as a single point of time is reasonable. There is a much higher numbers of families involved in education at preschool level and the primary than high school secondary level and consequently, the author do selected students of primary public schools and assumed as the grade level of students increases they become as responsible for themselves. Then, the households of these students' parents were taken as target population for this study. The study was conducted by considering ethical responsibility. This includes providing information to the respondents the purpose of the study and the used of the information as well.

Sample size determination and sampling procedure
Multi-stage sampling technique is used to recruit study subjects. First, four districts were randomly/ lottery methods/selected from a total of 22 districts. TheN, four primary public schools were selected from the selected districts. Even if parental involvement is significant at all stages of students, the researcher fixed on selected five to eight-grade-level students used as smallest unit strata (ni). Based on their semester results, the students were selected systematically. And families of those students have been taken as subjects of the study.
The sample size determination formula adopted for this study; where n is the sample size,Z 2 α=2 is confidence interval or Z score= (1.96) 2 .
E is margin of erroris assumed 5% and δ 2 is variance assumed = 0.5.
Since the no N >5%, the required minimum sample is obtained by making adjustment (Cochran, 1977).
Hence, the total number of study sample is 292. Figure 1 below shows that the sampling technique used by the researcher.
Hence, the total number of study sample is 292. Table 1 shows that the total population and sample selected in study area.

Data analysis procedure
Data were collected using semi-structured questionnaire and edited, coded, and analyzed with great care. The researcher used both descriptive and econometric method to analyze the data.
Academic achievement or (academic) performance of student, result of students obtained from 100% is the outcome which is depends on both parents' characteristics and parental involvements in education.
Multiple regression models using the concept of dummy variable are used when the number of independent variables is greater than one (Douglas, 2001). The model is given as by using the concept of the dummy variable: wherej À is number of observation; i:e:; j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n k À is number of parameter The parameters of the regression were estimated by ordinary least square method. Ordinary least square method parameter can be obtained by minimizing the sum square residuals.

Results
The study has presented that each item of the questions merged to form two categories of parental involvement in education as follows: parental involvement in education at home and parental involvement in education at school activities. The researcher categorized the level of parental involvement in education at home and at school into three levels, very low (maybe not at all), medium, and high.
Accordingly, we can observe from Figure 2, 19.5% of the respondents were not actively involving themselves at all in giving advice, guiding, and counselling their children at home. Around 66.8% of the respondents were to have shown medium parental involvement in helping their children, while 13.7% of respondents showed a good status of parental involvement in education at home.
Similarly, the study revealed that 53.1% of the respondents were not participating in school activities at all and 33.9% of them were medium participation and 13.0% of them were good involvement in school activities (Figure 3).  As observed from Table 1 the sex of the household head, the age of the household head, and the sex of the students were not statistically correlated with students' performances. The educational level of household head is positively correlated weak and significantly with students' performances (0.328**) at a 0.01 level of significance. The source of income of the household also shows correlated and significant with students' performances (0.418**). And the age of students has a weak correlation with students' performances (0.147*) at a 0.05 level of significance.
As it was indicated in Table 2, and parents' reviewing students' activities and keeping child's schedules were correlated to the students' achievement (0.269**) and (0.603**), respectively. Individuals' participation in their child's activities also correlated to students achievements (0.307**). Rating the overall of their children's academic performances and behavioral changes also positively correlated to the children's achievements (0.302**) and (0.447**) respectively. Here, the education level and economic status of individuals no more showed the correlation with students' academic achievements. Also the participation of families with your child's homework and studying showed the correlation with students performances (0.371**) at 0.01 level of significance (see Table 2).
According to the Table 3, participation of the households in planning activities with schools' managements have had correlated with students performances (0.367**) at 0.01. Quick response for letters sent by the schools' managements were also positively correlated with students performances (0.339**) at 0.01. Attending school meetings and give comments is not correlated to students' academic achievements (0.110) while attending school's conferences have statistically significant relationship with students achievement measured by CGPA (0.412**) at 0.01 level. The participation of families with social activity and workshop or trainings offered by the school were also significantly correlated with the students performances (0.321**) and (350**) at 0.01, respectively.
Thus, both of them have a more significant positive correlation with students' academic achievements (Table 4).
From Table 5 we observe that the multiple linear regression coefficients is performed to determine the socio-economic factors on students academic performances.
The beta value is a measure of how strongly each predictor variable influences the response variable (performance). From Table 5 we can observe that the gender of the household head has an impact on students' academic achievement by contributing 2.36 times. Similarly, the  educational level of the household head positively influences the response variable. i.e. as the educational level increase by one unit, the students' performances increase by 80%. The source of income and age of students also positively powered the students' academic achievement (see Table 5). I.e. for parents whose source of income is preferred, their students' academic performance is high. And each unit increases the age of students, and their performances increase by 2.68 factors. Similar studies pointed that, age was positively related to the CGPA of the students in Nigeria. According to a cross-sectional study in Norway, higher age was associated with better average academic performance of students (Bonsaksen et al., 2018). Older students, that is 25 years and above are wiser and more mature (Tadese et al., 2022). Students of a higher age may have a stronger motivation for studying and follow a more productive approach to studying; that means, they may employ more deep and strategic approaches than surface approaches.
On the other side, the age of the head of the household, the number of children owned, and the gender of the student were not showing significance.
From Table 6 we observe that the multiple linear regression coefficients is performed to determine the impact of parental involvement in education at home and school on students academic performances. As it can be seen from Table 6, standardized beta value results that when parental involvement in education at school increases by one unit the students' academic performances increase by 5.24. This means that parental involvement in education at school positive influence on students' academic performances. And when Parental involvement in education at home increases by 1% students' academic performances also increases by 5.97 and vice versa.

Discussion
The results of the correlation coefficient investigated in the above section bear the relationship between parental involvement and the academic achievements of students. Each item of parental involvement is significantly correlated with the academic achievements of students. Likewise, according to a study by Harper (Harper et al., 2012, Bezabih, 2020, students whose parents helped with homework, and communicating with school management and parents who were involved in school activities were highly scored on a standard exam organized. When parents check the children's homework, study time, and letters given from schools, communication with schools management, and participate in school activities, children are likely to perform better results. In line with the study, studies conducted by Wulandary &Herlisa, (2017) and Gedfie et al. (2020) showed that parents have limited involvement in helping their children and participating in school activities. A study by Abate and Birhanu (2019) revealed that there was a high correlation between parental involvement in education and students' academic achievements, and parents do not check their children's homework and report cards. Likewise, a finding by 2018) stated that the contribution of parents to the academic achievement of students is high and there is a strong correlation between parental involvement and the academic achievements of students. According to a study by 2016) children tend to perform better result when parents get involved in education.
In other side, students' performances have relation with demographic variables like income of the household, parents' occupation, family size, and parents' educational level. Studies by Ogg & Anthony, (2020), Wang et al., (2016) and Arega et al., (2020) showed that similar findings' income of the household, parents' occupation, family size, and parents' educational level were factors that affect students' academic achievements. A similar study revealed that educated parents and the economic income of households were having value for their child's development (Topor et al., 2011, Basazen & Alamirew, 2017. According Parmar and Nathans (2022) to younger children showed higher achievement. It is possible that as school curriculum becomes more difficult with more advanced grade levels, achievement lowers. Older children showed higher levels of behavior problems in the school context. The finding suggests that it is better when children become young to come to school.

Conclusion
Moreover, parents' socioeconomic factors were found to be highly correlated with students' academic achievements. The multiple linear regression results found that gender, educational level, sources of income of parents, and age of students were found to be the major predictors of students' academic achievements. The study revealed that parental involvement in education at home and school has a great contribution to students' academic achievements. This implies that parents' involvement is education has relevant for quality of education.
Parental involvement in education for improving quality of education in the learning aspects via parenting day activities like actively involved as a resource, participating in field trip program, develop inspiration classroom, mate, and evaluate the learning process and outcome, participating in improving the infrastructures, actively participate in the management committee and supporting the finance will be more meaningful as the effort in improving the quality of education.
Government should give attention to individuals with low socioeconomic backgrounds to preserve, economically and morally, to make consistency for the obtainable opportunity. School leaders and policymakers should continue to explore mechanisms of increasing parents'