Students with special educational needs are a diverse group. Promoting their learning success is particularly challenging, even in practice for inclusive schools. At the same time, parents are often left alone with diagnosis and treatment.

Therefore, the focus of our paper is on the families of successful students with special educational needs and the networks around their families. Taking a positive approach, our paper did not seek to identify difficulties and barriers but to examine the resources that support learners with special educational needs who succeed (Honkasilta et al., 2019; Muir & Strnadová, 2014; OECD, 2011, 2021; Schuelka & Carrington, 2021). The theoretical basis of the paper is the theory of social capital and the sociological interpretation of resilience (Allan et al., 2009; Coleman, 1988; Muir & Strnadová, 2014; Pham, 2013; Vehmas, 2010).

Our research question is: What are the differences in social capital between parents of successful students with and without learning, behavioural and emotional disorders, and difficulties (SEN B)?

H1: Family social background helps both groups to become successful to the same extent (Haber et al., 2016; Kocaj et al., 2018).

H2: School professionals help both groups to be successful to the same extent. Support: School professionals also play a role in the success of children with integrated learning problems in inclusive education (Honkasilta et al., 2019; Hornby & Kauffman, 2021; Pham, 2013).

H3: Relationship networks within and outside the family help both groups to become successful to the same extent (Coleman, 1988; Epstein, 2018).

The sample included 1041 parents of 10-year-old children from 72 Hungarian inclusive schools, aged between 27 and 68 years. In total, 86% of the participants were women. The survey was conducted in January 2020, right before the pandemic. The sample was geographically (settlement type and region) and by school social composition representative of Hungary. The sample design used was stratified multistage sampling. In our analysis, we first conducted a factor analysis and attempted to isolate the dimensions along which family support is formed. The items we included in the factor analysis were based on Coleman’s social capital theory. As a second step, to explore the predictors of academic success, we had chosen the ordinal regression method, because our dependent variable has three values (0-1-2 achievements). We used separate ordinal regression models to examine predictors of academic success in the two subsamples of parents of students with and without SEN B. Independent variables were the following: parent-child multiple social capital index (which included the amount of quality time spent together, openness to school, and openness to a wider social network on the parental side), three family support factors (consultant child-raising network, emergency parental network, weekend child-raising network), social background index (which included educational level and labour market activity of parents, place of residence, and subjective financial situation).

Our results show that students with SEN B come from families with lower socio-cultural backgrounds, while their multiplex social capital within the family is the same as that of their peers without SEN B. Previous research has made it clear that socio-cultural background has a strong influence on academic success. Our research findings show that, although this relationship holds for the group of children without SEN B, for those who do have SEN B, this effect is cancelled out, i.e., a favourable background does not provide an advantage, but high multiplex family capital does. Looking at the families’ child-raising networks, we find that there is no distinct separation between intra- and extra-familial networks and for both study groups, we see that the parents of more successful students can rely on larger family networks. However, the involvement of professional school helpers (teachers, psychologists, special educators) in child-raising does not reflect positively on academic success for students with and without SEN B. The main message of this paper is that we can confirm the view held by the literature, namely that responsibility cannot be placed on the family alone. Without a supportive network around the family, student achievement will decline. The problem cannot be reduced to a school-based issue. A school environment can be regarded as inclusive if it involves, and collaborates with, families, and helps parents support their children in the out-of-school environment to achieve common goals with the school (Brussino, 2020; Honkasilta et al., 2019; Koutsoklenis & Papadimitriou, 2021; Schuelka & Carrington, 2021).

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