Influence of Long-Term Malnutrition on Educational Performance

Abstract

A random sample of 60 Grade I school children, who were chronically malnourished, were studied along with an age-sex matched control group of nutritionally “normal” children from the same class, information on environmental factors were obtained from the parents and a behavioural assessment was done by the teacher. Two sets of tests in language and arithmetic were used to measure educational performance. In addition, a development quotient was obtained for each child. The majority of the stunted children were from an economically deprived background and were likely to show a deviant behavioural pattern. They also had a lower level of educational performance. This study indicates that inter-relationships between socio-economic factors, stunting, deviant behaviour and development quotient influence educational performance, even though the relative contributions made by each of these factors vary.