Maternal Education, Home Environment and Chinese Primary School Children’s Academic Performance: Longitudinal Results

We tested the mediating effect of the home environment on the link between maternal education level and Chinese primary school children's Language/Literacy and Math test scores and their growth trajectories. Survey data on maternal education and 11 locally meaningful home environment variables (e.g. number of children's books, number of extracurricular activities, childcare) were collected from 231 mothers whose children attended the same school. District-wide test scores at the end of the first semester of the first grade (Time 1), the first (Time 2) and the second semester of the second grade (Time 3) were obtained from the school. Controlling for the child's sex, the father's education level and maternal occupational prestige, structural equation modeling showed that the number of books at home mediated the link between maternal education level and the children's Language/Literacy scores at Times 1, 2 and 3 and the children's Math score at Time 3. The number of extracurricular activities mediated the link between maternal education and the children's Language/Literacy and Math scores at Time 1. The number of children in the household mediated the link between maternal education and Math score at Time 3. Furthermore, for both subjects, growth mixture modeling on the children's test scores across the three times identified two latent classes with different growth parameters. Mediation analysis showed that for Math scores, the number of children in the household mediated the link between maternal education and the latent class membership, but for Language/Literacy scores, none of the home environment variables was significant.