This chapter discusses associations between home environments and children’s early learning and development outcomes. It first explores parental levels of education and household structure as indirect influences on children’s outcomes. The chapter then examines the frequency and nature of parent-child activities, with a focus on reading and digital practices, as well as parents’ engagement in the child’s ECEC centre/school, as more direct influences on children’s outcomes.
Building Strong Foundations for Life
Results from the 2025 Early Learning and Child Well-being Study
Abstract
In half of the jurisdictions participating in IELS 2025, five-year-olds most commonly have mothers who have completed tertiary education. In the other half, the modal highest educational attainment of mothers is upper secondary or post-secondary, non-tertiary education.
On average across jurisdictions, children whose mothers have tertiary education have higher scores across early learning and development domains than children whose mothers have lower levels of education. Differences are largest and most consistent in the foundational learning domains of emergent literacy and emergent numeracy – around 30 score-points on average, in each case – but are also sizable in most social and emotional development domains. Conversely, children whose mothers had at most completed lower secondary education have significantly lower scores than children whose mothers have intermediate levels of education in eight out of ten assessment domains.
IELS provides information on both material (e.g. children’s books) and process-related (e.g. parent-child activities) aspects of the home learning environments of five-year-olds. There is a marked socio-economic gradient in these home environments: children in advantaged families have access to more resources and parents who engage more frequently with them in activities with an explicit developmental focus than children in disadvantaged families.
The activities that parents do with their children matter for their early learning and development in addition to parents’ own characteristics. After accounting for socio-economic status, children whose parents engage more frequently in activities with a developmental focus – as captured by the IELS home learning environment index – have higher scores in the foundational learning domains of emergent literacy and emergent numeracy, and in the social and emotional development domains of trust and pro-social behaviour, on average. Supporting families in providing caring, stimulation-rich home environments can promote children’s outcomes.
On average, 54% of parents read to their child every other day or more often, but this varies greatly between jurisdictions. This activity is also more frequent among socio-economically advantaged families. For five-year-olds, a high frequency of shared parent-child reading is associated with higher scores in emergent literacy and emergent numeracy.
Almost half of the five-year-olds in the study use a digital device every day, on average across jurisdictions, with higher shares among children in socio-economically disadvantaged families. Associations between children’s scores in early learning and development domains and the frequency of both children’s use of digital devices and parent-child joint digital educational activities are weak and most often non-significant.
On average, 43% of five-year-olds in IELS 2025 have parents who are strongly involved in activities at their early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres/schools; this involvement is consistently higher in socio-economically advantaged families. Children whose parents are strongly involved in their ECEC centres/schools have higher scores than peers with less involved parents in many domains of assessment, particularly in the social and emotional development dimension. This relationship holds after accounting for socio-economic status, suggesting that strengthening family-school connectedness in the early years benefits all children.
Young children’s family contexts critically influence their early learning and development trajectories. The environments in which children grow up afford different opportunities depending on the material, time, and cultural resources that families can mobilise. Before other social institutions start to play a role in children’s lives, it is within the family that disparities in early cognitive and social and emotional development begin to emerge, starting from infancy.
Family contexts are central to ecological models of human development as well as to perspectives on the inter-generational transmission of educational success (Bronfenbrenner, 1986[1]) (Feinstein, Duckworth and Sabates, 2008[2]). These frameworks distinguish layered influences that link families’ characteristics and children’s outcomes. More indirect or distal influencing factors pertain to the family’s broader demographic and socio-economic environment, whereas more direct or proximal factors concern children’s immediate lived experiences and interactions with parents or other family members. Parents’ values and beliefs mediate between these two layers. IELS collects information on both general background variables, which exert indirect influences on children’s outcomes, and process-related variables, which exert direct influences.
This chapter describes associations between home environments and children’s early learning and development outcomes in IELS 2025. The chapter first examines parental levels of education and household structure as distal factors shaping children’s outcomes. It then looks at a range of activities that parents undertake with their child, as well as their levels of engagement in the child’s early childhood education and care (ECEC) centre or school, as more proximal processes affecting outcomes1. These analyses provide a more in-depth examination of the factors behind socio-economic gaps in children’s outcomes, given the strong influence that families’ socio-economic status exerts on home learning environments.
Parental levels of education shape children’s outcomes through a variety of channels. Longer and more complex schooling experiences can provide parents with a better understanding of the environmental factors that contribute to children‘s development and enhanced skills to provide these positive inputs. This includes, for instance, a better grasp of the dynamics of child development and parents‘ own linguistic and mathematical abilities, as well as confidence in their own parenting skills (Feinstein, Duckworth and Sabates, 2008[2]).
Household composition can also exercise an influence on children’s early learning and development. This can be expected when changes in family structure (e.g. a transition from a two-parent household to another living arrangement) create instability and stress for children, including through reduced resources or lower-quality interactions with other family members. However, particularly in the context of an increasing diversity of family structures, a wide range of factors mediate the relationships between household composition and children’s outcomes and well-being, and changes in family structure need not be detrimental for children (Hadfield et al., 2018[3]) (Vowels et al., 2023[4]).
Education and demographic profiles of IELS 2025 families
The children who took part in IELS 2025 are growing up in diverse family contexts, consistent with the contextual socio-demographic indicators of participating jurisdictions (Table B.5.1and Annex A). At the time of data collection in 2025, on average across jurisdictions, 94% of the five-year-olds were living with two parents, while up to 16% of children in Ceará, Pará and São Paulo (Brazil) and 9% of children in England (United Kingdom) lived in single-parent households (Table B.5.1). Across jurisdictions, five-year-olds most often had one sibling, and the average number of siblings living in the home was lower in Malta and Korea, and larger in the United Arab Emirates.
On average, almost two-thirds of the mothers of the five-year-olds in IELS 2025 were in their thirties. In the majority of jurisdictions, mothers most frequently were between 35 and 39 years of age, with also close to a third of mothers in the United Arab Emirates, the Flemish Community (Belgium) and Baku and Sumgait (Azerbaijan) aged 30 to 35 years and over a third of mothers in Ceará, Pará and São Paulo (Brazil) being below age 30 in 2025. Korea has the largest share of mothers aged 40 or older (46%) (Table B.5.1).
In terms of parental levels of education, children in the United Arab Emirates, the Flemish Community (Belgium), England (United Kingdom), Korea and Malta most commonly had mothers who had completed a tertiary education degree (a bachelor’s or master’s degree, a doctorate, or equivalent). In the Netherlands, Baku and Sumgait (Azerbaijan) and Ceará, Pará and São Paulo (Brazil), a majority of children had mothers whose highest level of attainment was either upper secondary education post-secondary, non-tertiary education, or short-cycle tertiary education. On average across jurisdictions, these two levels represent the highest educational attainment of over 80% of the mothers of the children in IELS 2025. Lower levels of maternal education were less frequent, but over one in five children in England (United Kingdom), Malta and Ceará, Pará and São Paulo (Brazil) had mothers whose highest attainment was either primary or lower secondary education International Standard. Classification of Education (ISCED) levels 1 or 2). An almost identical pattern of educational attainments existed among children’s fathers (Table B.5.1).
Associations between maternal level of education, living arrangements and children’s outcomes
Given that, on average, mothers tend to spend more time and interact more actively with children than fathers, in particular during the early years of their lives (Berghammer and Milkie, 2025[5]), the association between parental education and children’s early learning and development outcomes in IELS 2025 is examined through the lens of the mother’s rather than the father’s level of education (Figure 5.1).
On average across jurisdictions and compared to children whose mothers’ highest level of attainment is upper secondary or post-secondary education, children whose mothers completed tertiary education have higher scores in all ten domains of early learning and development assessed in IELS. Differences in scores between these two groups of children are largest and most often statistically significant in the foundational learning domains of emergent literacy and emergent numeracy – of 30 points on average, in each case – but also clear in the executive function domain of mental flexibility and in all the social and emotional development domains except trust. Across dimensions, gaps in favour of children of mothers with tertiary education tend to be most pronounced among children in Ceará, Pará and São Paulo (Brazil), the Flemish Community (Belgium) and the United Arab Emirates.
Conversely, the scores of children whose mothers completed, at most, lower secondary education are significantly below the scores of children whose mothers have intermediate levels of attainment in eight out of the ten domains of assessment, on average across jurisdictions. This negative association is again most consistent in the foundational learning domains, with the size of the gaps being largest among children in the Netherlands and Korea, but weak across executive function and social and emotional development domains.
Overall, these results are in line with the socio-economic gaps in children’s outcomes presented in Chapter 4. As expected, differences in scores by maternal level of education are smaller in magnitude that those between children and the upper and lower quarters of the IELS index of socio-economic status, which also captures the influence of income and parental occupational levels. At the same time, the results suggest that the educational attainments of parents remain, in themselves, an independent and important predictor of children’s early learning and development outcomes.
Score-point difference in foundational learning, executive function, and social and emotional development domains associated with mothers having tertiary or below upper secondary education, compared to upper secondary or post-secondary education
Note: *Estimates for Brazil correspond to the average across the three participating states. Comparisons based on the highest level of formal education completed by the child’s mother: tertiary education refers to ISCED levels 6, 7 and 8; upper secondary or post-secondary education refers to ISCED levels 3 and 4/5; below upper secondary education refers to ISCED levels 2 and 1 or less. Differences calculated relative to the mean scores of children whose mothers have intermediate levels of attainment (ISCED 3, 4 and 5). Solid triangles indicate statistically significant differences. For more information, see the IELS 2025 Technical Report (OECD, 2026[6]). Jurisdictions are sorted in ascending order of the size of the gap relative to children with tertiary educated mothers.
Source: OECD, IELS 2025 Database, Tables B.5.2, B.5.3 and B.5.4.
By contrast, only minor and inconsistent differences exist across the ten domains of assessment between the scores of children living with two parents and one parent only. Notably, the few gaps observed in some jurisdictions tend to become non-statistically significant after accounting for the socio-economic status of the family (Tables B.5.7, B.5.6 and B.5.7).
An extensive literature documents that supportive home learning environments – understood as a set of conditions within the family setting that encompass material resources (e.g. age-appropriate books and educational toys), adult-child interactions with a developmental intent and woven into daily routines (e.g. shared reading, play, rich conversations) and affect and belief systems (e.g. warmth, self‑efficacy) – bear positive associations with young children’s early literacy and numeracy and social and emotional skills (Melhuish et al., 2008[7]) (Rose et al., 2017[8]) (Dong et al., 2020[9]) (James-Brabham et al., 2025[10]).
IELS 2025 collected information on home learning processes by asking parents about the weekly frequency of engagement with their child in various types of activities with a developmental focus. These include interactions such as reading to the child from a book, having conversations about the child’s feelings, engaging in imaginative or pretend play, helping the child learn letters or numbers, doing digital educational activities, or taking the child to a library or to special or extra-cost activities outside the home. Parents indicated how often they do these activities, from “never” to “five to seven times” in a typical week. The items in the IELS Parent questionnaire are derived from research on self-reported measures of home learning environments (Niklas et al., 2016[11]) and adapted for young children (Melhuish et al., 2008[7]). The activities can be seen to reflect proximal, process-related factors with the potential to directly influence children’s early learning and development, while mediating the relationships between more distal factors, such as parental levels of education or parenting values, and child outcomes.
Figure 5.2 shows the percentage of children whose parents engage in different interactions with a high frequency, defined as “three or more days per week” for activities that can take place within the home and unstructured outside activities, and as “once a week or more often” for organised activities outside the home (for more disaggregated results, see Table B.5.8). On average across jurisdictions, back-and-forth conversations about how children feel and why they feel that way are the most common of these interactions, taking place at least three per week for 76% of children. However, being an activity that requires little additional time or expense from adults, it is important to also note that nearly a quarter of children in the study do not have this type of interaction with their parents on a regular basis. In the same vein, other activities with light requirements such as storytelling or imaginative play, appear also to not be part of the daily routines of more than half of the five-year-olds in IELS 2025. Meanwhile, on average across jurisdictions between 40% and 56% of children have parents who engage with them three or more times a week in activities with an explicit literacy or numeracy component (e.g. reading from a book, singing songs or poems, playing with numbers) or involving motor development (e.g. physical activities outside). As expected, organised activities involving other actors or settings are generally less common. On average, only one in ten children in the study go to a library with a parent with a weekly frequency, but more than half of the children participate in special activities outside the home (e.g. extra-curricular lessons, sport clubs) at least once a week.
The rich information about these activities is combined into the IELS home learning environment index to facilitate its aggregate analysis with increased reliability (see the IELS 2025 Technical Report (OECD, 2026[6]). The index can be seen as a summary measure of the frequency of parent-child interactions with a deliberate educational or developmental purpose. Importantly, on average across jurisdictions the values of the index are substantially higher among socio-economically advantaged families compared to disadvantaged families (Table B.5.10). This is in line with research showing that parents with higher levels of education, occupational status and income tend to spend more time with their children, especially at younger ages and often at the expense of their own leisure time, and engage more frequently in stimulation-rich interactions with them (Monna and Gauthier, 2008[12]) (Dotti Sani and Treas, 2016[13]).
Percentage of children whose parents report engaging in the following practices with them with varying frequency in a typical week
Note: For the upper panel, the percentage shown groups the response categories “3-4 days a week” and “5-7 days a week”, compared to “Never”, “Less than once a week” and “1-2 days a week”. For the lower panel, it groups the three response categories with higher frequency, compared to “Never” and “Less than once a week”. For more information, see the IELS 2025 Technical Report (OECD, 2026[6]). Activities are ranked by descending order of the frequency on average across jurisdictions.
Source: OECD, IELS 2025 Database, Table B.5.8.
In IELS 2025, this socio-economic gradient in home learning environments is most pronounced in Baku and Sumgait (Azerbaijan), Ceará, Pará and São Paulo (Brazil), Korea and the United Arab Emirates. By contrast, no or only marginal differences in the index exist between families in different socio-economic groups in England (United Kingdom) and the Netherlands, a result that may be partially explained by the low response rates to Parent questionnaires in these two jurisdictions (see Reader’s guide). Meanwhile, the index values do not differ significantly between two-parent and single-parent households, except in Korea and Malta (Table B.5.10).
Associations between the home learning environment and children’s outcomes
On average across jurisdictions, a one-standard deviation increase in the IELS home learning environment index – which represents a higher frequency of parent-child activities with a developmental focus – is positively associated with children’s scores in several domains across the three dimensions of early learning and development measured in IELS 2025 (Figure 5.3).
Score-point differences in foundational learning, executive function, and social and emotional development domains associated with a one-standard deviation increase in the home learning environment index, before and after accounting for socio-economic status
Note: *Estimates for Brazil correspond to the average across the three participating states. The IELS home learning environment index is derived from 13 items in Q15 of the Parent questionnaire; it has an international mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. Socio-economic background as measured by the IELS index of socio-economic status (SES). Solid triangles indicate statistically significant differences. For more information, see the IELS 2025 Technical Report (OECD, 2026[6]). Jurisdictions are sorted in ascending order of the score-point difference in each domain.
Source: OECD, IELS 2025 Database, Tables B.5.11, B.5.12 and B.5.13.
This general positive association is more consistent in the foundational learning domains of emergent literacy and emergent numeracy, and in the social and emotional development domains of trust and pro-social behaviour, where it translates into average increases of between 5 and 10 points in children’s scores, after accounting for socio-economic status. In the executive function dimension, the association is also positive and significant children’s scores in mental flexibility, but rarely in inhibition and working memory. It is also weak and non-significant in the domains of emotion identification and emotional attribution. Across the many domains of early learning and development where the association with home learning environments holds, increases in children’s scores tend to be larger in magnitude and more often significant in Baku and Sumgait (Azerbaijan), England (United Kingdom) and Korea.
Notably, while generally attenuated when families’ socio-economic status is taken into account, the association remains statistically significant in many participating jurisdictions in the five domains where the average magnitude of the score increases is larger, which include both directly and indirectly assessed domains. Given the differential pattern of engagement in activities with an educational or developmental focus of parents in socio-economically advantaged and disadvantage families, this is a noteworthy finding which indicates that what parents choose to do with their children (i.e. the concrete types of interactions and processes) matter for their early learning and development in addition to their education, occupational and income levels. This points to the benefits for children’s outcomes of supporting families to provide caring and stimulation-rich home environments in which their children can thrive.
Further, an item-level analysis serves to examine which specific parent-child interactions are most strongly associated with children’s outcomes, and how the role of individual activities varies across jurisdictions (Table B.5.9). This can provide a more nuanced understanding of the different components of the home learning environment and thereby insights to support meaningful interactions in different family contexts. This analysis shows that item-level correlations with children’s scores are generally positive but weak (with coefficients below .20). However, some activities stand out from this general pattern. On the one hand, stronger positive correlations with children’s outcomes are observed for the weekly frequency with which parents read to the child from a book and for the weekly frequency of special or extra-cost activities outside. These associations, found also in the first cycle of IELS (OECD, 2020[14]), are more pronounced in relation to emergency literacy and emergent numeracy, two domains where correlations with the frequency of visits to the library and the frequency of conversations about children’s feelings are also relatively higher than for other activities. Shared reading and special or extra-cost activities have also larger positive correlations than the rest of the activities with children’s scores in other domains, but weaker than with those in the foundational learning dimension. On the other hand, doing digital activities with children is the activity for which a higher weekly frequency bears a more consistent negative correlation with children’s scores, particularly again with regard to emergent literacy and emergent numeracy. The Flemish Community (Belgium) and the Netherlands are the two jurisdictions in IELS 2025 where these patterns of correlations with specific activities are more noticeable (Table B.5.9).
A focus on reading
IELS 2025 provides information on reading-related resources and practices in home environments through questions to parents about the number of children’s books available in the home and, as noted above, about the frequency with which parents read to children from a book on a weekly basis.
A positive and statistically significant association exists between the number of children’s books available in the home and five-year-olds’ outcomes in several early learning and development domains. For instance, on average across jurisdictions, the scores of five-year-olds with access to more than 50 children’s books at home are 42 and 37 points higher in the foundational learning domains of emergent literacy and emergent numeracy, respectively, than the scores of children with fewer than 25 such books in their homes. These differences are also significant, ranging from 15 to 25 points, in the executive function domains of working memory and mental flexibility and in the social and emotional development domain of emotion identification. Further, the differences hold in most cases, albeit smaller in magnitude, when the comparison is made between five-year-olds with 25 to 50 children’s books and peers with fewer books (Table B.5.16). Importantly, these results take into account families’ socio-economic status, which is strongly correlated with the number of children’s books available at home (Table B.5.14). While the number of children’s books in itself represents a resource rather than a direct interaction, this suggests that the availability of these books reflects not just families’ economic resources, but also the variety and quality of the inputs for parent-child reading activities and parents’ valuing of such interactions.
On average across jurisdictions, 54% of parents report reading to their child from a book three days or more in a typical week, with this percentage being highest (over 80% of families) in England (United Kingdom) and the Netherlands and lowest (around 34% or less of families) in Ceará, Pará and São Paulo (Brazil) and the United Arab Emirates (Table B.5.8). Across all participating jurisdictions, the frequency of these reading activities is higher in socio-economically advantaged families than in disadvantaged families (Table B.5.14).
Figure 5.4 shows that a high frequency of parent-child reading activities is, in many jurisdictions, associated with higher scores in multiple domains of early learning and development. After accounting for socio-economic status, the average score difference between children in families where shared reading activities are most and least frequent (i.e. “more than five days a week”, compared to “less than once a week”) amounts to 32 and 23 points in the foundational learning domains of emergent literacy and emergent numeracy, respectively. In the executive function domains of working memory and mental flexibility, and in the social and emotional development domain of emotion identification, these differences range from 9 to 17 points. However, differences are smaller or non-statistically significant when the comparison is made between children in families with an intermediate and low frequency of parent-child reading interactions (i.e. “one to four days a week”, compared to “less than once a week”) (Table B.5.16). Overall, results suggest that highly frequent (i.e. every other day or more often) joint reading activities with parents are beneficial for children, particularly in foundational learning domains, but also in executive functions and social and emotional development with which they bear substantive and positive correlations (see Chapter 3).
Score-point difference in foundational learning, executive function, and social and emotional development domains associated with a high and intermediate frequency of parents reading to their children from a book, compared to low frequency, and after accounting for socio-economic status
Note: *Estimates for Brazil correspond to the average across the three participating states. Score-point differences calculated as scores of children whose parents read to them from a book with high (“five or more days a week”) or intermediate (“one to four days a week”) frequency, minus scores of children whose parents read to them with low frequency (“less than once a week”). Socio-economic background as measured by the IELS index of socio-economic status (SES). Solid triangles indicate statistically significant differences. For more information, see the IELS 2025 Technical Report (OECD, 2026[6]). Jurisdictions ranked in ascending order of the score-point difference between high and low frequency parent-child reading activities.
Source: OECD, IELS 2025 Database, Table B.5.16.
A focus on digital practices
IELS 2025 Also provides a window into the role of digital resources and practices in the home environments of young children. The study includes questions to parents about the weekly frequency with which five-year-olds use digital devices (e.g. a desktop or laptop computer, tablet device, smartphone), as well as about the weekly frequency of parent-child joint digital activities with an educational purpose.
On average across jurisdictions, 46% of 5-year-olds are reported to use a digital device every day, a slight increase from the international mean of IELS 2018 (42%) with a different set of participating countries, but consistent with the increase reported by parents in England (United Kingdom) between the two cycles (from 39% to 42%). In IELS 2025, the percentage of children reported to be daily users of digital devices ranges from 24% in the Netherlands to 66% in Malta. In all jurisdictions except Baku and Sumgait (Azerbaijan), Ceará, Pará and São Paulo (Brazil) and the United Arab Emirates, children in socio-economically disadvantaged families are more often reported to be using digital devices every day than children in families with a high socio-economic status, by a difference of between 10 and 26 percentage points (Table B.5.17).
Consistent with results from IELS 2018, the association between children’s frequency of use of digital devices and their scores across the ten early learning and development domains in IELS 2025 is rarely statistically significant, even before accounting for families’ socio-economic status. Comparisons between children reported to use a digital device never or less than weekly, at least once a week, or daily suggest that their outcomes are largely unrelated to the frequency of interactions with digital tools. However, a few exceptions exist to this pattern. In the executive function domain of working memory, both a moderate and a high frequency of use are positively related to children’s scores in several jurisdictions. Further, Korea stands out as the jurisdiction where positive associations are more often observed: this holds for children’s scores in emergent numeracy, working memory, mental flexibility and emotion identification, and generally only with a moderate frequency of use – defined as “at least once a week but not every day” (Table B.5.18).
Mirroring these results, Figure 5.5 shows that the frequency with which parents engage in educational activities with their child on a computer, tablet or smartphone (e.g. using an educational app) bears also a weak and inconsistent association with children’s scores across domains of assessment and jurisdictions. Engaging in this type of activity with a high frequency – defined as “three days of more per week”, and relative to “less than once a week or never” – is associated with lower children’s scores in some domains, particularly in the Flemish Community (Belgium) and the Netherlands, and with higher scores in some domains in Korea (Table B.5.19). This may also reflect cultural variation in parents’ understandings of what constitutes digital educational activities with five-year-olds.
Taken together, results about the associations of digital practices with children’s outcomes in IELS 2025 do not support strong conclusions about the potential impact of these practices. There is no evidence that a highly restrictive approach – characterised by little overall use of digital devices by five-year-olds and no resort to joint consumption of educational digital content – is related to better early learning or development outcomes. At the same time, associations between these outcomes and children’s daily device use or a high frequency of joint parent-child use of educational apps or tools are generally negative, even if rarely statistically significant. Overall, these results are consistent with research reviews documenting mostly non-significant or small negative associations between device use and overall screen time and a range of cognitive and psycho-social outcomes in early childhood (Mallawaarachchi et al., 2022[15]) (Kirkorian et al., 2025[16]). However, as highlighted by this literature, improved measures of the content and context of device use by young children may be needed to derive more robust and nuanced conclusions about these associations.
Score-point difference in foundational learning, executive function, and social and emotional development domains associated with a high and intermediate frequency of parents doing educational digital activities with their children, compared to low frequency, and after accounting for socio-economic status
Note: *Estimates for Brazil correspond to the average across the three participating states. Score-point differences calculated as scores of children whose parents do educational digital activities with them with high (“three or more days a week”) or intermediate (“one or two days a week”) frequency, minus scores of children with low frequency (“less than once a week or never”). Socio-economic background as measured by the IELS index of socio-economic status (SES). Solid triangles indicate statistically significant differences. For more information, see the IELS 2025 Technical Report (OECD, 2026[6]). Jurisdictions ranked in ascending order of the score-point difference between high and low frequency parent-child educational digital activities.
Source: OECD, IELS 2025 Database, Table B.5.19.
Family involvement in ECEC/schools can support early learning and development by aligning the home and early schooling ecologies in which children’s skills take shape. For instance, family-school connectedness can promote a shared sense of responsibility for children’s progress and well-being by establishing effective channels for communication and consistent adult-child interactions. In this two-way relationship, parents bring distinct knowledge of their child’s needs, cultural background and preferences, while early educators can advise about home activities (e.g. reading, play, open conversations) that would complement experiences in ECEC settings (Serpell and Mashburn, 2011[17]) (O’Toole et al., 2019[18]) (Barnett et al., 2020[19]).
The frequency and intensity with which parents engage with the structures and activities of early education centres and schools characterise this form of family involvement. In IELS 2025, information on parental involvement in ECEC centres/schools is gathered through a question addressed to the ECEC staff member who knows the child best in the centre/school attended at age 5, asking them to rate the strength of this involvement in four categories, from “not at all” to “strongly” involved2.
On average across jurisdictions, 43% of the children in the study have parents who are strongly involved in the activities that take place in their child’s ECEC centre/school, 38% have parents moderately involved, and 19% have parents slightly or not at all involved, according to ECEC staff. This pattern is largely consistent across jurisdictions, although strong parental involvement is more frequently reported by educators in Baku and Sumgait (Azerbaijan), and lower levels of involvement are more commonly reported by ECEC staff in the Flemish Community (Belgium) and England (United Kingdom) (Table B.5.20).
Further, and similarly to parent-child activities with a developmental focus, a clear socio-economic gradient exists in levels of parental involvement in ECEC centres/schools: on average, the share of parents strongly involved in their child’s ECEC centre/school is 17 percentage points higher among socio-economically advantaged families than among disadvantaged families, with differences statistically significant in all jurisdictions (Table B.5.20).
Association between parental involvement in ECEC/school and children’s early learning and development outcomes
In IELS 2025, in the majority of jurisdictions and domains of assessment, large and significant gaps in early learning and development outcomes exist between five-year-olds whose parents are strongly involved in their ECEC centres/schools and peers whose parents are less involved (Figure 5.6). On average across jurisdictions, differences in children’s scores according to parental levels of involvement are largest and most systematic – between 22 and 52 score-points, and significant in virtually all jurisdictions – in the social and emotional development domains of trust, pro-social behaviour and non-disruptive behaviour. Sizable gaps exist also in most jurisdictions in the foundational learning domains of emergent literacy and emergent numeracy – of 17 and 20 points, respectively – while in executive function domains differences tend to be smaller – between 10 and 15 points. In these two dimensions, differences are most consistent among children in the Flemish Community (Belgium) and England (United Kingdom).
Importantly, in most cases, accounting for families’ socio-economic status reduces but does not eliminate raw gaps. This suggests that this involvement is not simply a reflection of varying levels of familiarity with the education system among parents with different levels of education, or of varying levels of financial resources. Instead, the result points to the intervention of different mechanisms, such as communication and collaboration channels between early education settings and families. Strengthening this connectedness can therefore represent an important policy target.
Score-point difference in foundational learning, executive function, and social and emotional development domains between children whose parents are strongly vs. moderately, slightly or not at all involved in their ECEC centres/schools, before and after accounting for socio-economic status
Note: *Estimates for Brazil correspond to the average across the three participating states. Analysis limited to children for whom ECEC staff reported a given level of involvement. Socio-economic background as measured by the IELS scale of socio-economic status (SES). Solid triangles indicate statistically significant differences. For more information, see the IELS 2025 Technical Report (OECD, 2026[6]). Jurisdictions are sorted in ascending order of the size of the gap in each domain.
Source: OECD, IELS 2025 Database, Tables B.5.21, B.5.22 and B.5.23.
References
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← 1. The analysis presented in this chapter rely strongly on information from Parent questionnaires. Given low response rates in some jurisdictions, readers are advised to interpret results with caution. See Reader’s guide and the IELS 2025 Technical Report for more information.
← 2. ECEC teachers could also indicate not knowing the parents/guardians of the child well enough to make a judgement. On average across jurisdictions, less than 2% of ECEC teachers provided this response. Children whose ECEC teachers provided this response are excluded from the analysis in this section.