Vol. 2, Issue 7, Part B (2016)

Education of the child first starts from the home and parents are their first teachers and remain their best teachers throughout life. The proper role of the parents is to provide encouragement, support and access to the activities that enable the child to master all-round development of personality. Keeping this fact in view the present study is done with the purpose to study and compare rural and urban higher secondary school students on parental encouragement and academic achievement. 240 higher secondary school students (rural 120 and urban 120) were selected on the basis of stratified random sampling technique. Agarwal parental encouragement scale developed by Kusum Agarwal was administered for data collection. The data was analysed by using Mean, SD and ‘t’ test. The study indicates that urban students have higher parental encouragement and academic achievement than rural students.