Abstract
In light of the Covid-19-related school lockdowns in Germany in 2020 schools, families and the students were faced with the major challenge to continue instruction at home. This paper examines the expectations of the parents that their children will experience school-related problems as a result to the lockdown-induced homeschooling within the next six months. For our explorative analysis, we choose a nonlinear regression approach. In the course of this, we introduce nonlinear models and highlight their added value compared to methods commonly used in empirical educational research. For the analysis we combine data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) with additional data sources like the COVID-19-Dashboard of the Robert-Koch-Institut (RKI). Our results show that parental expectations of future school problems were particularly prevalent among those parents whose children had low reading competencies and low diligence as an aspect of school effort. In addition, we find a relationship between a lower occupational status (ISEI) and higher parental expectations of school-related problems. Furthermore, parents' short-term and long-term concerns about Covid-19 show a positive association, making school problems more likely in the eyes of the parents. The purpose of this paper, in addition to applying and explaining nonlinear models for the first time in empirical educational research, is to analyze expectations regarding problems of homeschooling in the first lockdown from a parents' perspective and to explore variables that influence these parental expectations.