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Primary School Pupils: Unequal GMC Developmental Pathways in a Single School Year.

ABSTRACT: Gross motor coordination (GMC) is essential for the development of specific motor skills and long-term participation in physical activities and sports. Group analysis reveals that, on average, children develop these skills gradually; however, how individuals develop GMC is less clear. The main aim of this study is to increase the understanding of developmental patterns within one school year, and whether children's grade, gender, or baseline GMC proficiency are associated with these developmental patterns. In total, 2594 Dutch children aged 6-12 years performed the modified Körper Koordinations Test für Kinder (KTK3+) twice in one school year (autumn and spring). The KTK3+ includes four subtests: walking backwards, moving sideways, jumping sideways, and eye-hand coordination (EHC) test. On average, children developed significantly on all subtests (p < 0.001). At baseline, children in higher grades scored significantly higher than children in lower grades, and children in grades 5 and 6 (age 9 and 10 years) showed most development (raw scores on average, p < 0.001). Boys outperformed girls on EHC across all grades, whereas girls outperformed boys on walking backwards. Nevertheless, both boys and girls developed similarly. Children with lower scores at baseline developed more quickly across all grades. Noteworthy is that 12.1-24% (depending on the test item) of the children scored lower in the spring than in the autumn tests. On average, children develop their GMC; however, we report large differences in their individual trajectories and note that a substantial number did not show a positive GMC development. Further research should examine GMC development with more possible influencing factors as well as over a longer time span to better understand differences in children's GMC development. This may result in more individualized programs in PE lessons, enabling children to optimally develop their GMC, and better use of GMC assessment tools to monitor children's development.

SUBMITTER: Niet M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9319405 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BACKGROUND: Rubella is an infectious and generally mild childhood viral disease. The disease is of public health importance because infection acquired during early pregnancy often results in foetal abnormalities that are classified as congenital rubella syndrome (CRS). The burden of rubella infection in most developing countries in not well documented because of limited epidemiological data. However, availability of an effective vaccine has made it necessary to have all the countries with no routine vaccination schedule to evaluate the burden of disease in order to make informed decisions on rubella vaccination and strategy. To address this gap we conducted a study to determine age-specific rubella seroprevalence rates and related risk factors among primary and pre-primary school children in Uasin Gishu district, Moi's Bridge location of Kenya. METHODS: Subjects of the study were 498 pupils from seven primary schools aged 4-20 years. Questionnaire surveys with blood sampling were conducted between January to July 2005. Samples were tested for rubella specific IgG antibody using ELISA test kit (Enzygnost Behring, Germany). RESULTS: Overall, rubella seropositivity rate was 80% and it increased with age from 59% (among ages 4-6 years) to 94% (ages 14-20 years). Multivariate logistic regression analysis model, showed that age of child and ownership of a television set which is a proxy measure of socio-economic status of family were significantly associated with rubella seropositivity. The odds of rubella seropositivity in a child older than 13 years was more than that in children younger than 7 years (OR = 3.8 95% CI 2.56-5.78). The odds of rubella seropositivity in a child whose family did not own a television set was 3 times higher than that of child whose family owned a set (OR 3.06, 95% CI 1.17-7.97). CONCLUSION: The study provides important and highly useful information on rubella age specific seroprevalence rates in Kenya. Advancing age was found to be associated with increased risk of rubella. Low socio-economic factors suggest an increased risk of infection in certain categories of society, and control measures need to target this. Overall, the findings can also be used by policy makers to model introduction of routine rubella vaccination in the country and also other developing countries facing similar challenges. More than half of the children got infected in pre-primary and efforts to control rubella should target pre-school children. These data provides pre-vaccination information that can be used to guide immunization strategy as well as to determine success of an immunization programme.

Project description:BackgroundData suggest that Ghana has made significant improvements in the educational system, resulting in some accomplishments. Nonetheless, pupils' academic performance at the junior high school level and in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) remains poor nationally. Some factors have been identified to influence poor academic performance in some parts of Ghana, but none in the Krachi West district. Thus, it has become imperative to determine the local factors accountable for this trend and identify the most appropriate localised solutions.Materials and methodsAn embedded research design was employed to ascertain the influence of pupils' characteristics and school environment factors on academic performance. In all, 361 participants (325 BECE candidates, 12 teachers, 12 head teachers and 12 PTA/SMC Chairpersons) were selected using cluster sampling, simple random and purposive sampling across 12 schools in the district. The academic performance of pupils was assessed using scores from six (6) subjects in the standardised district-level mock examination.ResultsBased on the examination scores, half of the pupils performed poorly in the six subjects. Even though from the quantitative study, pupils' characteristics had no significant influence on academic performance, school location (β = -3.29, p < 0.01), school type (β = 1.15, p < 0.01), and school environmental factors (β = 0.807, p = 0.024) were significant predictors of academic performance in the district. Pupils in private schools were thrice more likely to achieve average academic performance than pupils from public schools (OR = 3.2, CI = 1.06-9.47). Also, schools with good environmental factors were twice as likely to have average academic performance than schools with poor environmental factors (OR = 2.2 CI = 1.11-4.52).ConclusionWhile school environment factors and pupil characteristics have a relationship with academic performance as suggested by the ecological theory, it was established in this study that only school location, school type and school environment factors were the significant predictors of academic performance in the Krachi West District. Therefore, education stakeholders need to consider these predictors when coming up with integrated but local strategies to improve pupils' academic performance in that district.

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Primary School Pupils: Unequal GMC Developmental Pathways in a Single School Year.

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