Current studies suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic is worsening existing social inequalities in the field of education worldwide. We argue that the pandemic is especially challenging for students from socially disadvantaged and educationally deprived homes as parental engagement and resources are hugely important to guide and support the learning process during the school closure period.To examine how well parents were able to help their children with schoolwork during the homeschooling period in Germany, we used data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) collected during the first homeschooling period in May/June 2020. Taking known mechanisms of inequality of educational opportunity into account, we explore the effects of parents’ aspirations and cultural, social, and economic capital on the ability to help their children.Our results show that although the majority of parents were able to provide good support with schoolwork, we found the expected inequalities due to social background. Low educated parents are twice as likely to be unable to provide sufficient support compared to highly educated parents. In our multivariate analyses, family resources show a significant positive effect on the likelihood that parents were able to help.Moreover, regardless of the social or cultural capital endowment of the parents, good technical equipment in the household is associated with a higher probability of support. Thus, ensuring technical home equipment could be a way to promote an educationally supportive learning environment across all social groups.

Current studies suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic is worsening existing social inequalities in the field of education worldwide. In this paper, we argue that the pandemic is especially challenging for students from socially disadvantaged and educationally deprived homes, as parental engagement and resources are very important in terms of guiding and supporting students’ learning processes during this school closure period. To examine how well parents were able to help their children with schoolwork during the homeschooling period in Germany, we used data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS, n = 3,714) collected during the first such period in May/June 2020 when students were in Grade 7. Taking known mechanisms of inequality of educational opportunity into account, we explored the effects of parents’ aspirations and cultural, social, and economic capital on their ability to help their children. Our results showed that although the majority of the examined parents were able to provide good schoolwork support, as expected, we found inequalities related to social background. Parents with low education were twice as likely as highly educated parents to be unable to provide sufficient support. In our multivariate analyses, family resources had a significant positive effect on the likelihood of a parent being able to help. Moreover, regardless of the social or cultural capital endowment of the parents, good household technical equipment was associated with a higher probability of support. Thus, ensuring that students have access to technical home equipment could be a way to promote an educationally supportive learning environment across all social groups.