Parenting Styles and the Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students in Assam: A Study of Biswanath District

Abstract

The impact of parenting goes well beyond the personality of a child; it is often seen impacting their learning process, coping mechanisms, and academic performance. This paper investigates the link between parenting styles and the academic achievement of students studying in secondary schools of Biswanath District in Assam. Descriptive survey methodology was employed. Data were collected from a sample of 240 students from six (three private and three government) ASSEB-affiliated secondary schools. Four types of parenting styles, namely, authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and uninvolved, were assessed using the Parenting Style Scale (PSS) developed by Gupta and Mehtani (2017). The students' academic achievement was measured based on their HSLC exam scores. It has been found that an authoritative parenting style was positively correlated with achievement; however, permissive and uninvolved styles were significant negative predictors. Moreover, the type of school management has also been found to play an important role in predicting the achievement level of students, where students studying in private schools performed better compared to students studying in government schools. Achievement did not differ significantly in the case of the gender of the students.