[N(poster)] ポスターセッション

英語

[1O30] Voluntary Parental Involvement in School Management and Foundational Literacy and Numeracy in Bangladesh

*Rakibul HASSAN¹ (1. Kobe University)

キーワード：

Grade-Adjusted Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Skills、Parental Involvement、School Management、Primary Education、Socioeconomic Gap in Learning

Decentralizing school management through parental involvement has been widely promoted in developing countries as a means of improving learning outcomes. Yet, the evidence has been mixed, particularly when such participation is mandated through policies or external interventions. Much less is known about naturally occurring parental involvement in decision-making, especially when distinguishing between financial and non-financial aspects. This question is highly relevant in Bangladesh, where near-universal primary school enrollment contrasts with persistently low levels of foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN). This study uses nationally representative MICS6 data from Bangladesh to examine whether voluntary parental involvement in school management is associated with children’s grade-adjusted and grade-standardized FLN scores. Two distinct types of involvement are analyzed: financial and non-financial management. The analytical framework combines the education production function with participatory governance theory, and estimation is based on cluster fixed-effects linear regression models. Robustness was tested using multiple imputations with inverse probability weighting, Entropy Balancing followed by weighted regressions, and subgroup models by gender, rural residence, and administrative level. The results show that parental involvement in financial management is consistently and significantly associated with improved literacy and numeracy outcomes across model specifications. The effect is particularly strong for children from the poorest households, suggesting that financial participation helps reduce socioeconomic gaps in learning. In contrast, non-financial involvement shows no consistent effect, apart from a modest association with numeracy among the poorest, which does not hold across all models. These findings emphasize the need to distinguish between types of parental involvement and highlight the critical role of financial engagement in strengthening foundational learning in low-resource settings.