Aligning Parental and Student Educational Expectations: Implications for Sustainable Development of Education and Social and Emotional Skills

Parent–child discrepancies on educational expectations have a significant impact on the holistic development of children, which is crucial for building sustainable educational ecosystems. Based on 7080 samples from the 2019 OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) conducted in a Chinese city, this study uses the ordinary least squares model and propensity score matching to estimate the causal effect of parent–child discrepancies on educational expectations on children’s social and emotional skills—core competencies for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)—and further employs the bootstrap method to test its mechanism. The results show that parent–child discrepancies on educational expectations have a significant negative impact on children’s social and emotional skills, with stronger effects observed among boys and 15-year-olds. The parent–child relationship and test anxiety play a chain mediating role in this relationship. The results suggest that to advance the goals of sustainable education, parents should set reasonable educational expectations and pay attention to nurturing their children’s social and emotional skills to foster holistic development within supportive family microsystems.