Para onde pende a balança

The objective is to create a parental incentive indicator, based on the data from the SAEB 2015 questionnaires applied to the 9th grade and to associate it with the proficiency of public school students in the SAEB 2015 Portuguese Language evaluation, controlling by socioeconomic level and the student's gender. This is quantitative research, using secondary data from the SAEB 2015 questionnaires. The results show that the presence of high parental incentives raises the students' mean results, however, this difference does not compensate for the differences in means when compared to the variable student's gender. Regardless of the degree of parental incentive received, within the same socioeconomic level group, girls perform better in the SAEB 2015 Portuguese Language evaluation than boys.