According to a study from University of Tübingen involving students from academic track schools in Germany, students who performed best and achieved the highest scores were those whose families enjoyed math and believed they were good at it ("motivated" parents), even if these parents were not involved in helping their children ("disengaged" parents).

According to this study, direct parental involvement is not necessarily the key to enhancing a child's academic achievement; Role-modeling an interest in math along with a strength in math may have a stronger positive influence.

Possibly these higher achievers with disengaged parents are developing an internal locus of control, or sense of owning their education.

The real question is whether a parent with low math abilities can fake interests in math and have that be a positive influence on a child's math achievement. Otherwise, it just sounds like heritablity of math abilities.

Only just saw this thread. This is great news for us! I hope the same goes for all other subjects.

If your parents like and are good at maths you are more likely to do well in maths? Wow who would have thought it! The involvement bit is interesting but i haven't read the paper so I can't say how much.

This study is restricted to ninth graders in "academic track schools." These are students that probably already have a lot of opportunity and support at school, so the lack of parental involvement probably isn't as damaging as it would be for some of our children in lower-performing public schools in USA, for example.