Parental Involvement in Education

This paper examines how different types of school resources affect parental involvement in children’s education and subsequent student effort. Using an original survey of UK primary school parents, we distinguish between school resources for in-person and remote learning. We find that parental involvement serves as a substitute for in-person school resources but complements remote learning resources. Incorporating these findings, we develop a new model of student effort demonstrating that in person learning investments, such as reducing class size, have a positive direct effect on student effort but also trigger a negative indirect effect as parents reduce their involvement. These opposing effects result in a neutral net impact. In contrast, remote learning investments have both a positive direct effect and a positive feedback effect by enhancing parental involvement. We provide evidence supporting these predictions and conduct counterfactual policy analyses, showing that investing in remote learning resources is more cost-effective than reducing class size , subsidizing parental time, or hiring tutors. Notably, ignoring the indirect effect of parental behavioral responses leads to a 15\% overestimation of the cost of increasing student effort via remote learning investments.