Student feedback, parent-teacher communication, and academic performance: Experimental evidence from rural China

University of Birmingham lead: Professor Stan Siebert

Project summary

Stan Siebert is working with a team in the Dept of Economics at Lingnan University-Hong Kong, to look at the economics of education for young school children (6-9 years) in rural central China where there are many left-behind children.

We have devised a special feedback assessment form which the teacher regularly discusses with learners, and then sends on to the (often absent) parents to enable them to better support their children. This method is cheaper than increasing staff-student ratios for example, and we find gives good improvement in exam results.

The research has been presented to the Econometric Society Asia meetings (June 2017) and the Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economists conference (December 2017).

Research Objectives

The research first aims to test methods of improving teacher-student feedback and thus introduce a new pedagogical mechanism. Alternatives such as high dosage tutoring are expensive, and our simple feedback approach is worth trying.

Our second intervention communicates the student’s feedback results to his/her parents, this can be seen as following the research on the cognitive achievement production function. It is a form of “proactive outreach” to involve parents in their child’s education. In principle, while parents and teachers should regularly communicate with each other, this more difficult to achieve in poor communities where parents are less educated and informed about parenting techniques and child development, especially where parents need to work far from home and have to leave their children behind; our study could help here.

Research Outputs

The research has been presented to the Econometric Society Asia meetings (June 2017) and the Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economists conference (December 2017).

Research Team

• Prof StanSiebett, Dept of Business UoB;
• Prof X D Wei, Dept of Economics Lignan University;
• Dr Alex Wong, Dept of Economics Lignan University;
• Dr X Zhou Dept of Economics Lignan University

Partner organisations and sponsors

Lingnan University, Hong Kong – funder, Research Grant Council in Hong Kong (Ref. No. d00971)