Parents' financial and cultural resources, grades, and transition to secondary school in the Federal Republic of Germany

It is proposed here that there are two reasons for extending the standard set of family factors predicting educational outcomes, such as parents' educational and occupational status, parents' income and family size. First, this standard set is not exhaustive, as is shown by sibling research; and second, the standard variables are merely descriptive and do not reveal the mechanisms which link family background and educational attainment. The notion of ‘status group culture’ might fill both gaps. It is hypothesized that for children of low status group parents a cultural mismatch exists between family culture and school culture, while no such mismatch is present for children of high status group parents. The higher the status group of parents, the more cultural resources children have at their disposal. Using data from a West German survey, in which information is collected on parents' characteristics and leisure-time activities and children's grades and transition to secondary education, indicators for parents' cultural resources are constructed. The findings suggest that parents' cultural resources indeed affect grades in German language and the transition to the Gymnasium, the most prestigious form of secondary education in Germany.