Children's Educational Outcomes Research Articles

The Impact of an educational intervention on knowledge of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder among primary school teachers in Lagos Nigeria

Objective: Primary school teachers have been identified as important partners in the prompt recognition, referral and management of children with ADHD. However their capacity to function in these roles is hinged on their extent of knowledge about ADHD. Furthermore teachers' knowledge about ADHD may influence the education and clinical outcomes of children with ADHD. This study assessed the impact of an educational intervention program on knowledge about ADHD among primary school teachers in Lagos, Nigeria.
 Method: An experimental study of the impact of a brief educational intervention on ADHD literacy among primary school teachers (n=144) in Lagos, Nigeria. At baseline, knowledge about symptoms and treatment of ADHD was elicited with a vignette-based questionnaire. The intervention consisted of the administration of an educational leaflet about ADHD, designed by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. One week post-intervention, the baseline assessments were repeated.
 Results: At baseline, 92.4% of the teachers could not recognise features of ADHD. The majority were also unaware of the role of teachers, medications and psychological interventions in the management of children with ADHD. Post-intervention, significantly greater number of respondents compared with baseline (88.0% vs. 7.6%) correctly identified symptoms of ADHD (p<0.005), and agreed that ADHD could be successfully managed with medications (63.2% vs. 9.0%; p<0.005) and psychological treatment (79.2% vs. 16.7%; p<0.005).
 Conclusion: A simple low-cost educational intervention is effective in improving knowledge about ADHD among primary school teachers in the shortterm. Further research is required to evaluate the impact of this intervention in the long term.

Women's decision-making autonomy and children's schooling in rural Mozambique.

Women's decision-making autonomy in developing settings has been shown to improve child survival and health outcomes. However, little research has addressed possible connections between women's autonomy and children's schooling. To examine the relationship between rural women's decision-making autonomy and enrollment status of primary school-age children living in their households and how this relationship differs by child's gender. The analysis uses data from a 2009 survey of rural households in four districts of Gaza province in southern Mozambique. Multilevel logistic models predict the probability of being in school for children between 6 and 14 years old. The results show a positive association of women's decision-making autonomy with the probability of being enrolled in primary school for daughters, but not for sons. The effect of women's autonomy is net of other women's characteristics typically associated with enrollment and does not mediate the effects of those characteristics. Based on the results, we argue that women with higher levels of decision-making autonomy may have a stronger preference for daughters' schooling and may have a greater say in making and implementing decisions regarding daughters' education, compared to women with lower autonomy levels. Results also illustrate a need for considering a broader set of autonomy-related characteristics when examining the effects of women's status on children's educational outcomes.

Child Fostering in Senegal

Child fostering is a practice widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa whereby children are temporarily sent to live with a host family. Using a rich household survey conducted in Senegal in 2006-7, the paper aims at describing the selection into fostering of both households and children and at examining the impact of fostering on the wellbeing of children (host, foster- and siblings left behind) measured through their school enrollment, labour and domestic work. Results suggest a wide heterogeneity among foster children, inducing differences in their wellbeing. The main sources of such heterogeneity come from the child’s gender and his duration of stay in the host household. Whether the fostering has been formally arranged between parents also seems to matter. Results are reassuring regarding the well-being of fostered children relative to their host siblings, even if they might not fare as well as children not involved in fostering. On average, education and labour outcomes of foster children are not different from those of their host siblings. In particular, results do not support the idea that fostered girls might be overloaded with domestic tasks: they do not seem to spend more time at it than their host sisters.

Sibship size and height before, during, and after the fertility decline

AbstractBACKGROUNDThere is still much to learn about the explanation for the often-found negative association between sibship size and different child outcomes. A plausible explanation is resource competition between siblings in larger families, as suggested by the resource dilution hypothesis.OBJECTIVEThis study contributes to our understanding of these mechanisms by investigating the association between sibship size and height before, during, and after the fertility decline to test predictions based on the resource dilution hypothesis.METHODSThe investigation is conducted using information from universal conscript inspections linked to a longitudinal demographic database. Regression analyses estimate a model derived from the resource dilution explanation and analyze the association between sibship size and height among men born in 1821-1950 in southern Sweden.RESULTSThe results show that the association between sibship size and height was negative from the mid-nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century. There is no association in the early nineteenth century. The strength of the association is gradually weakened over time for men born from the 1840s until the 1940s. It is most consistent among men born from 1881-1921, corresponding closely to the time for the fertility decline in the area. The association is not a result of confounding by observable demographic or socioeconomic differences between families.CONCLUSIONSThe results are in line with resource dilution being an important explanation for the negative association between sibship size and height. Resource dilution in larger families still seems to be dependent on the societal and historical context.1. IntroductionA negative association between the number of children in a family, the sibship size, and the heights of the children has been shown many times for 20th century populations in high-income (Douglas and Simpson 1964; Olivier and Devigne 1983; Mednick et al. 1984; Lawson and Mace 2008; Suliga 2009) and low-income countries (Desai 1995; Jordan et al. 2012; Manley, Fernald, and Gertler 2012), even though no association has been found in some populations (Desai 1995). A negative association between sibship size and the children's outcomes has not only been observed with regard to height, but also, and in an even larger number of studies, with regard to the children's educational outcomes and social mobility (Blake 1981, 1985; Downey 1995, 2001; Sacerdote 2007; see also the review by Steelman et al. 2002).The association between sibship size and child outcomes is thus firmly established, at least in 20th century high-income populations. Much less is known about the mechanisms that lead to these negative associations. The most-used explanations are resource dilution in larger families and confounding. The mechanisms behind the negative associations have implications for our understanding of family dynamics and behavior, and also for our understanding of the demographic transition (e.g., Becker 1993). The presence of the associations in historical populations also has implications for, for example, unified growth theory (Galor 2012) or the theory of the technophysio evolution (Floud et al. 2011). Both theories assume that resource dilution affects child outcomes and this is the most important (Galor 2012), or one of several (Floud et al. 2011), mechanism(s) generating dynamic effects in the models.The fertility decline has also been proposed as an explanation for the secular increase in height and improving health of children from the late 19th century onwards (Reves 1985; Weir 1993; Schneider 1996; Hatton and Martin 2010a). Hatton and Martin (2010a), for example, retrospectively extrapolate based on cross-sectional data from 1930s Britain and suggest that about 25% of the increase in height should be attributed to the fertility decline. These suggestions also make it interesting to test how the association between the sibship size and the living conditions of children has developed longitudinally. …

Economic Uncertainty, Parental Selection, and Children's Educational Outcomes

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany experienced an unprecedented temporary drop in fertility driven by economic uncertainty. Using various educational measures, we show that the children born during this nativity slump perform worse from an early age onwards. Consistent with negative selection, mothers who gave birth in that period had worse observed personal characteristics. These children are also less likely to have grown up within stable family environment. Investigating underlying mechanisms reveals that parental educational input and emotional attachment were also lower for these children. Finally, sibling analysis enables us to reject time of birth effects.

What Accounts for the Racial Gap in Time Allocation and Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital?

This paper estimates the impact of parents' time investment in young children, their socioeconomic status and family structure on long-term outcomes of children. We developed and estimated a model of dynastic households in which altruistic individuals choose fertility, labor supply, and time investment in children sequentially, using data on two generations from the PSID. Parental behavior affects the education outcomes of children, their labor market earnings, and also their marriage market outcomes. The dynastic framework provides a natural way to aggregate the outcomes of children as it is measured by their valuation function. Time allocation patterns differ by race, gender, education and family structure (number of children and marital status). Both the returns to parental time investment and the costs vary across these groups. On average black individuals invest less time with their children. Our estimation results show that despite the fact that the valuation function is higher for whites and the fact that conditional on education, blacks earn less than whites, on the margin, there are no significant race differences in the rate of returns to paternal time investment, and blacks have a higher return to maternal time investment than whites. The main reason for the lower parental time investment by blacks is the differences in family structure. There is a significantly higher proportion of black single mothers than white single mothers and the opportunity costs of time for single mothers are higher than the opportunity costs of married mothers due to income sharing and transfers within married households. We also find that the returns to maternal time investment are significantly higher for boys. This implies that mothers act in a compensatory manner, favoring low ability children in the family. Since girls already have a higher likelihood of achieving a high level of education than boys, mothers seem to invest more time in boys than in girls as the number of children increases. Our findings suggest a significant quality-quantity trade-off. The level of investment per child is smaller the larger the number of children, thus, this decline in the per-child investment is driven by the time constraint and the opportunity costs of time and not by the properties of the production function technology of children. We, also find that quality-quantity trade-off for blacks is significantly larger than that of whites. This is mainly due to the higher fertility of single black female and the resulting greater time constraint they face.

Local modelling techniques for assessing micro-level impacts of risk factors in complex data: understanding health and socioeconomic inequalities in childhood educational attainments.

Although inequalities in health and socioeconomic status have an important influence on childhood educational performance, the interactions between these multiple factors relating to variation in educational outcomes at micro-level is unknown, and how to evaluate the many possible interactions of these factors is not well established. This paper aims to examine multi-dimensional deprivation factors and their impact on childhood educational outcomes at micro-level, focusing on geographic areas having widely different disparity patterns, in which each area is characterised by six deprivation domains (Income, Health, Geographical Access to Services, Housing, Physical Environment, and Community Safety). Traditional health statistical studies tend to use one global model to describe the whole population for macro-analysis. In this paper, we combine linked educational and deprivation data across small areas (median population of 1500), then use a local modelling technique, the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system, to predict area educational outcomes at ages 7 and 11. We define two new metrics, “Micro-impact of Domain” and “Contribution of Domain”, to quantify the variations of local impacts of multidimensional factors on educational outcomes across small areas. The two metrics highlight differing priorities. Our study reveals complex multi-way interactions between the deprivation domains, which could not be provided by traditional health statistical methods based on single global model. We demonstrate that although Income has an expected central role, all domains contribute, and in some areas Health, Environment, Access to Services, Housing and Community Safety each could be the dominant factor. Thus the relative importance of health and socioeconomic factors varies considerably for different areas, depending on the levels of each of the other factors, and therefore each component of deprivation must be considered as part of a wider system. Childhood educational achievement could benefit from policies and intervention strategies that are tailored to the local geographic areas' profiles.

Maids or mentors? The effects of live-in foreign domestic workers on children's educational achievement in Hong Kong

This paper studies the effects of live-in foreign domestic workers (FDWs) on school children's educational outcomes using samples from two population censuses and a survey data set. The evidence consistently points to Filipino FDWs improving the educational outcomes of school children by decreasing their probability of late schooling or increasing their scores of core academic subjects. English-speaking ability and maturity are shown to be the most important assets of the Filipino FDW in improving children's educational outcomes. These findings suggest that FDWs provide an important childrearing service.

The impact of child labor on children's educational performance: Evidence from rural Vietnam

In 1998, nearly one-third of Vietnamese children engaged in non-housework labor supply, 95% of these working children residing in rural areas. This paper investigates the impact of child labor on children's educational outcomes in rural Vietnam using the 1998-Vietnam Living Standard Survey. The paper finds that child labor lowers children's academic performance and the negative impact is bigger for girls.

An Intervention to Address Bullying in 5th Grade Students

The purpose of this study was to measure the effectiveness of a comprehensive anti-bullying training program on child health outcomes, bullying behaviors, and educational outcomes among 5th graders in an urban public school setting.

Factors associated with pupil toilet use in kenyan primary schools.

The purpose of this study was to quantify how school sanitation conditions are associated with pupils’ use of sanitation facilities. We conducted a longitudinal assessment in 60 primary schools in Nyanza Province, Kenya, using structured observations to measure facility conditions and pupils’ use at specific facilities. We used multivariable mixed regression models to characterize how pupil to toilet ratio was associated with toilet use at the school-level and also how facility conditions were associated with pupils’ use at specific facilities. We found a piecewise linear relationship between decreasing pupil to toilet ratio and increasing pupil toilet use (p < 0.01). Our data also revealed significant associations between toilet use and newer facility age (p < 0.01), facility type (p < 0.01), and the number of toilets in a facility (p < 0.01). We found some evidence suggesting facility dirtiness may deter girls from use (p = 0.06), but not boys (p = 0.98). Our study is the first to rigorously quantify many of these relationships, and provides insight into the complexity of factors affecting pupil toilet use patterns, potentially leading to a better allocation of resources for school sanitation, and to improved health and educational outcomes for children.

Children at Risk of Poor Educational Outcomes: In Search of a Transdisciplinary Theoretical Framework

In most western countries, the number of ‘children at risk’ for poor educational outcomes seems to have been increased in recent years. Nearly 20 % of the students in those countries meanwhile fail to acquire the levels of literacy, mathematics and science achievement that are required to effectively participate in today’s knowledge-based society. Thus, there is a strong need to extend research focusing on the identification of risk factors associated with these undesired educational outcomes in children. Although attempts have been made to conceptualize the issue of ‘children at risk’ for poor educational outcomes from the perspective of different scientific disciplines, the interplay of multiple risk factors located on the different levels focused by different disciplines has been rarely addressed. Thus, we advocate for more transdisciplinary activities integrating multiple scientific perspectives on the concept of ‘children at risk’ for poor educational outcomes. These activities should include at least three dimensions affecting developmental trajectories being important for children’s individual academic outcomes: (1) individual characteristics including both biological as well as psychological features, (2) contextual factors, as well as dynamics defined by (3) time changes and interactions between individual and contextual categories of risk factors.

Giving a second chance: an after-school programme in a shanty town interacted with parent type: lessons from a randomized trial

This paper evaluates the role that an after-school may play in the educational outcomes of children living in poor suburbs. Previous evaluations have focused on average effects, with mixed findings. A possible explanation of these inconclusive findings is that after-school programmes may have heterogeneous effects. Our hypothesis is that the impact of after-school programmes depends on parent type. Exploiting the existence of oversubscription for an after-school placed in the poorest region of a developing country, we design a randomized trial to assess the effects on academic achievement, behaviour, and grade retention at 1st grade in primary school. Employing an intention-to-treat approach, we find that the after-school programme under analysis is effective in raising children's school achievement for those with a committed parent type. These results may be crucial for the designing of policy since increasing time in safe, supervised settings is not enough: The after-school programme demands parents' involvement.

Transitions in secondary education: Exploring effects of social problems

The purpose of this article is to investigate educational choices and attainment of children who experience social problems during their upbringing. The study explores the extent to which social problems can help explain the gaps in entry and dropout rates in upper secondary education in Denmark between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Population-based registers are used to include information on family upbringing, e.g. alcohol abuse, criminality, use of psychopharmaca and out-of-home placement. We estimate a parsimonious version of Cameron and Heckman's (2001) dynamic statistical model of educational progression. By using this method, we parcel educational attainment into a series of transitions and the model is able to control for educational selection and unobserved heterogeneity. We apply counterfactual analyses to allow a formal decomposition of the effects of social problems. The results show that social problems during upbringing have a large and significant effect on children's educational outcome and that the indicators of social problems explain about 20–30 per cent of the class differences in the students’ educational outcomes.

The influence of closing poor performing primary schools on the educational attainment of students

This paper examines whether the closure of poor performing primary schools improved students' educational attainment. It is believed that school closure affects children's educational outcomes positively because children switch to better primary schools. At the same time, school closure creates a social disturbance such that educational outcomes may be affected negatively. There is no previous literature on the effect of this type of school closure on student performance. The empirical results indicate that student test scores are not affected by the school closure. Children are, however, tracked into higher secondary education levels after the school closure if they received more education years at the new primary school. This effect fades out and eventually becomes negative for children who received more than one education year at the new primary school. The results further suggest that there are no detrimental effects of a school closure in terms of educational performance.

Beyond the walls of the school: Risk factors and children and youth in the Gulf

UNESCO has reported that progress on the Education For All movement has been slow in the Arab world, including the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The low levels of achievement on national and international assessment tests in these states support this judgment. In this conceptual paper, we explore risk factors that can impact the education and educational outcomes of children and youth, reviewing the existing literature and considering its applicability to the Gulf. We argue that risk factors exist in the Gulf that affect short- and long-term outcomes and create barriers to success. Three such factors identified include societal change, familial factors, and gender.

Health promoting schools as learning sites for physicians in-training

Purpose – Although medical schools do well in preparing the next generation of practitioners to diagnose and clinically treat illness, they struggle in preparing them with capabilities in the areas of health promotion and disease prevention. Similarly, health promoting schools (HPS) face challenges in working to enhance the health and educational outcomes of children. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The authors draw from their local and international collaborative work as practitioners and medical educators to examine how health professions schools can work in partnership with HPS for mutual benefit. Findings – Health advocacy is a core competency in medical education. A primary focus is on health promotion and disease prevention. However, providing practical, experiential opportunities – “learning-by-doing” – is a challenge. To overcome this difficulty, medical schools may be well served by partnering with HPS. This can provide mutually beneficial learning opportunit...

An evaluation of the effects of an integrated services program for multi-service use families on child welfare and educational outcomes of children

The purpose of the study was to evaluate a program that provides integrative case management for families dependent on at least two government services (e.g., child welfare, disability, chemical dependency, vocational rehabilitation). In the current study, we focused on effects of services on children's educational and child welfare outcomes two years after program exit. Children enrolled in the program were compared to a community comparison sample through propensity score matching. None of the group differences was significant. However, outcomes related to child maltreatment (number of child maltreatment reports accepted by Child Protective Services and out-of-home placements) improved dramatically within two years after exit. Outcomes in the education area were less uniformly positive. On the one hand, children's attendance was high and school mobility was low. In addition, there was a significant reduction in the number of children receiving special education services two years after exit. Nevertheless, a third of the children were still receiving special education services two years after exit, and their academic performance on standardized reading and math tests was quite poor. Thus, the intensive case management model was related to successful outcomes in an area directly targeted by the program (child maltreatment), but the gains did not generalize to another domain that was not an explicit focus of the program (academic achievement).

Towards intensive parenting? Changes in the composition and determinants of mothers' and fathers' time with children 1992–2006

Contemporary expectations of good parenting hold that focused, intensive parental attention is essential to children's development. Parental input is viewed as a key determinant in children's social, psychological and educational outcomes, with the early years particularly crucial. However, increased rates of maternal employment mean that more parents are juggling work and family commitments and have less non-work time available to devote to children. Yet studies find that parental childcare time has increased over recent decades. In this paper, we explore the detail of this trend using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS), 1992 and 2006. To investigate whether discourses on intensive parenting are reflected in behaviour, we examine a greater range of parent-child activities than has been undertaken to date, looking at trends in active childcare time (disaggregated into talk-based, physical and accompanying care activities); time in childcare as a secondary activity; time spent in the company of children in leisure activities; and time spent in the company of children in total. We also investigate whether the influence of factors known to predict parental time with children (gender, education, employment status and the age of children) have changed over time. We contextualize our analyses within social and economic trends in Australia and find a compositional change in parental time, with more active childcare occurring within less overall time, which suggests more intensive, child-centred parenting. Fathers' parent-child time, particularly in physical care, increased more than mothers' (from a much lower base), and tertiary education no longer predicts significantly higher childcare time.

Outcomes for Children and Families Following Unplanned Pregnancy: Findings from a Longitudinal Birth Cohort

This study examined the associations between a measure of unplanned pregnancy and outcomes related to family socioeconomic conditions, family functioning, parent–child relationships, and child educational and behavior outcomes in a New Zealand birth cohort studied to 18 years. Associations were modelled between a measure of pregnancy planning (planned; unplanned) and 12 outcomes using multiple regression, negative binomial regression and logistic regression. The associations were adjusted for a series of factors related to parental characteristics, birth family characteristics, and maternal family background. After adjustment for sources of confounding, there were statistically significant (p < 0.05) and marginally significant (p < 0.10) associations between pregnancy planning and: family socioeconomic outcomes; family functioning; and measures of parent–child relationship quality. Estimates of Cohen’s d ranged from 0.12 to 0.38, with a median value of 0.16, suggesting relatively weak associations after adjustment. Adjustment for confounding reduced the magnitude of the association between pregnancy planning and achieving secondary school qualifications, and between pregnancy planning and childhood conduct problems to statistical non-significance. The results suggest that even after accounting for potential sources of confounding, unplanned pregnancy was related to modest increases in the risk of adverse family socioeconomic outcomes, family dysfunction, and poorer parent–child relationship outcomes. Programs designed to reduce the incidence of unplanned pregnancy may help to reduce risks in these areas for families and children.