Dr Anita Clarke1
1murdoch Children's Research Institute/ Children's Hospital, Melbourne , Australia
Biography:
Anita is a Paediatric Fellow currently working in the Centre for Child Community Health at the Royal Children's Hospital. Prior to medicine, Anita worked as a Speech Pathologist specialising in the Paediatric Community setting, working with children with speech and language delays. She is passionate about working with children and loves the reward of community work. At home, Anita is a mum of 3 boys (7, 4 and 1) who she loves spending time with.
Academic Performance and associated factors of Deaf and Hard of Hearing primary school-aged children.
Clarke A, Sung V, Smith L, Shepherd D
Centre for Child Community Health, Royal Children’s Hospital, Victoria, Australia
Abstract
Introduction: Learning difficulties are common in children who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH). This study aimed to describe the academic performance of DHH children between 9-12 years and the child and family factors that impact on academic performance scores.
Methods: Data was obtained from participants of the Victorian Childhood Hearing Impairment Longitudinal Databank. Academic performance was measured using the Wide Range Academic Test WRAT) across domains of Word- Reading, Spelling and Mathematics. Descriptive statistics were reported and the proportion of participants scoring more than 1 SD below the normative mean on each subtest was calculated. Linear regression examined whether child and family factors predicted WRAT standard scores.
Results: There were 148 (94.8%) who completed the WRAT assessment between 9-12 years of age with the average age of 11.2 years (SD of 0.82). WRAT subtest standard scores showed that DHH children struggled the most with Mathematics (mean of 87.43 SD 17.07) with 46.53% of children scoring more than 1 SD below the normative mean. Factors including non verbal IQ, prematurity, having additional comorbidities and being in specialised school settings other than mainstream were predictive of academic performance below the mean.
Discussion: This study highlights the importance of assessing DHH children for learning difficulties which can assist in school transition planning and allow for monitoring and evaluation.