Tracking health-related underachievement in the first two decades of life (THRIVE)

Summary

Health and school performance are closely linked, but we still know little about which health conditions cause children to underperform, and how this can be prevented. Although children with health problems often do less well at school, this does not mean that they lack ability. Many health conditions can be treated, or their impact on schooling can be prevented.

When children with health problems are unable to show what they are truly capable of, society misses out on important talents. If these children receive better support, more of them can feel included and have better opportunities to succeed in life.

In this project, we investigate how children’s health affects their school performance, in interaction with their family and school. We follow children from early childhood until they become young adults.

We look at both mental and physical health and aim to identify which health problems have the greatest impact on learning and school performance. Using advanced data analysis tools, we can identify the most important factors.

We also investigate whether health problems may be one of the reasons why differences in educational attainment are passed from parents to children. Since we cannot conduct experiments on children, we compare siblings within the same family and examine random genetic variation to better understand the causes.

Finally, we look at differences between schools to identify which characteristics of schools help children with different health problems succeed as well as possible. We have previously shown that school characteristics matter for how children with ADHD perform. We will now investigate this for other health conditions, such as autism and epilepsy.

We use data from Norwegian education and health registries, as well as data from sources including the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), which has followed families for around 20 years. We look at reading and numeracy skills in primary and lower secondary school, grades in the 10th grade, and whether students complete upper secondary education.

The project aims to find out how we can help children with health problems succeed better at school, so that fewer are left behind and more are able to reach their full potential.