British Educational Research Journal

This paper addresses the issue of parental employment and hours of work and their impact on children's educational outcomes at the age of 16. I contribute to existing research by applying more accurate measures of parental time spent outside the household—using direct measures of hours spent at work and commuting, and by examining the independent effect of mothers’ and fathers’ work involvement, as well as their joint effect. Additionally, I use longitudinal datasets that allow for the examination of the impact of parental hours of work in the preceding year on the child's exam results in the following year. In contrast to previous studies, which focus on the early development of the child, I examine the parental employment while the child is preparing for a final secondary school certificate. My results show that there is a statistically significant and positive association between parental engagement in the labour market and number of final secondary school exams taken by the child. In contrast, I found that children whose parents work very long hours perform worse at the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) level. This result holds even if unobservable family characteristics are taken into account in family‐fixed effects’ and siblings’ estimations.