Abstract:

The influence of the socio-cultural background of the family on children's educational performance has been attracting increase attention in the last few years. Although schools promote equality of opportunity for all students, with the application of several procedures that try to reduce the social and economic disparity, there is a perception that children’s educational achievements are still very affected by the families’ resources and how parents value education.

This paper objective is to perform a study, in Portugal, on how children’s education success are related and influenced by their parents’ socio-cultural background, measured by their levels of education.

This study is based on the results of the Portuguese secondary school examinations, for the academic year 2013/14, in all public schools in the country.

Several statistical techniques are applied in order to evaluate if it is true the common perception that children of parents with a higher level of education tend to obtain higher scores on national tests.

Keywords:

Level of education, students performance, national tests.