1431 Preterm Birth and School Performance: The Role of Parental Education

Abstract

While social background and birth characteristics are often found to be independently associated with school achievements the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. This study aims to explore the combined influence of parental education and gestational age grades in Mathematics in a cohort of Swedish children in whom we have previously shown associations of preterm birth with language skills. We studied 10825 children born 1973-1981, the third generation of the register-based Uppsala Multigenerational Birth Cohort. Logistic regression models were fitted to estimate odds ratios of achieving higher grades in Mathematics at age 16, relative to lower grade, by parental education and own gestational age. Our results shows that for children from families with lower parental education, the adjusted OR of receiving a higher grade was significantly lower for preterm compared to full term births grade in Mathematics (OR=0.53, 95% CI 030- 0.93). Estimate did not change substantially when adjusted for several potential confounders. There was no evidence of significant effects of shorter gestational age for children with parents from other educational groups. Consistent with our earlier results concerning language skills, we concluded that the disadvantage of shorter gestational age on the chance of achieving higher grade in Mathematics was confined to children from families where none of the parents had higher education. This suggests that the generally detrimental influence of shorter gestational age on school performance may be avoidable.