Asthma linked to poor grades

Asthma may be affecting some primary school children's ability to read and do maths.

A startling pilot study from Canterbury University has shown that a high proportion of low-achieving 9-year-olds have had asthma.

The results were "very surprising", researcher and education lecturer Kathleen Liberty said, as previous studies had not linked asthma with achievement levels.

Previous studies of asthmatic children had shown they were at risk of emotional and behavioural problems and were away from school more often but they had not shown a risk of low achievement.

But Ms Liberty said earlier studies had tended to focus on the average performance of asthmatic children, so high-achievers may have been disguising the true picture.

Her study of 229 9-year-olds focused on low-achievers - those who had fallen more than 18 months behind their classmates - and what factors set them apart from their peers.

Remarkably, she found that about half those in the low-achieving groups for reading, listening and spelling - and an alarming 70 per cent of those behind in maths - had suffered asthma.

Typically, one in four Christchurch children have asthma. So Ms Liberty's study shows that asthmatics are over-represented amongst low-achievers by a factor of at least two and possibly as much as three.

The results held true when other factors such as gender, ethnicity, school absence, and emotional or behaviour characteristics were taken into account, Ms Liberty said.

"Presence of asthma was a significant predictor of reading achievement level along with short attention span and income category," she said. "The presence of asthma was the only factor that accurately predicted achievement level in math."

Research had previously linked low achievement with factors such as family income, ethnicity, gender, disability and early childhood education, but had not looked at a child's health.

If children's asthma was not under control they could be having trouble sleeping and may have underlying anxieties, Ms Liberty said. "It might be hard for them to pay attention [at school] because they've got all other things going on."

The problems must have begun early in their education as her study group had fallen 1 1/2 years behind their peers after just three years of schooling.

"So what is happening when the child starts school? They may have attention problems and that makes it difficult for them to catch on at the beginning. Then they might start thinking 'I'm dumb, I can't do this'."

Ms Liberty warned that her study was only a pilot and further research was needed.

- NZPA