Poor eyesight dims students’ educational performance

Students with poor vision that goes uncorrected cannot perform to their full potential in a classroom setting, because vision is a crucial part of the learning process.

Many school children are unfairly called lazy and stupid by their teachers and family members for performing poorly in school—when the problem may not be in their brains, but in their eyes.  Scores of students suffer from problems with the ways their eyes focus light, which can cause vision problems. These vision problems can affect the children’s reading skills, as well as their performance in class and overall educational attainment, according to a new study conducted by researchers in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences in Sana’a University.

Many different eye disorders can cause blindness or visual impairment. These include cataracts, a clouding of the eye’s natural lens; glaucoma, which involves a build-up of pressure in the eye that destroys sight; and diabetic retinopathy, a common complication of diabetes which may cause poor vision or even blindness.  But refractive errors (problems focusing light) are considered to be the major causes of visual impairment in children, affecting some 14 percent of Yemeni children.  Available data indicate that around 2 percent of the Yemeni population is blind, and over 5 percent suffer from low vision. Unfortunately, Yemen has relatively poor eye care infrastructure facilities. 

Eye care services are available in the major cities, albeit with a shortage of ophthalmologists (1.04 per 100,000 patients). Unfortunately, screening programs for refractive errors have not been established yet. The study, titled Errors of Refraction and the Educational Attainment of School Students in Sana’a City, 2006, assessed the relation between refractive errors and the educational attainment of school students in Sana’a city.  The study was conducted on 314 students, from 13 public and private schools, who attended the final exam for the 9th grade in the year 2004-2005 in Sana’a city. About 162, or 52 percent, were males, and 152, or 48 percent, were females, with a mean age of 16. 

Undetected or under-corrected refractive errors, particularly hypermetropia, or nearsightedness, a defect of vision in which a person is able to focus on objects in the distance but not on close objects, is especially a problem in school children.  Students with hypermetropia have difficulty reading their study materials, because of the excessive straining of their eye muscles, which eventually causes a headache. They also often suffer from their teachers and parents’ continued scolding. In severe cases, however, poor vision and the inability to read material written on the blackboard can have a serious impact on a child’s participation and learning in class and this can adversely affect a child’s education, occupation and socio-economic status for life.

There is no significant difference between the eyesight of males and females.  About 46 percent of study participants were found to have normal eyesight. Some 54 percent suffered from some kind of eye problem, whether nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism. Astigmatism, an affliction of the eye where vision is blurred by an irregularly shaped cornea, affected 43 percent of the students, making it the commonest type of refractive error. This was followed by anisometropia, the condition in which the two eyes have an unequal refractive power, affecting 28 percent of students. Myopia, or nearsightedness,  afflicted 19 percent; Hypermetropia afflicted 5 percent; and lesions on the eye afflicted 6 percent.

The difference of distribution of refractive errors between males and females was insignificant. Students with poor vision who wore eyeglasses made up 11 percent, but 89 percent of people with poor vision did not have glasses.  Possible reasons for this include the lack of social awareness about refractive errors. Furthermore, in Yemen many affected individuals find it a shame to wear eyeglasses, especially females. Absence of school health programs regarding the detection of vision problems is another contributing factor. The high costs of spectacles may be another reason more Yemenis don’t wear glasses.

Myopic, hypermetropic and astigmatic students who wore eyeglasses scored better in tests than those who did not, and better than those with good vision. Therefore, correction of those refractive errors appeared to improve the reading ability of those students and, hence, their educational achievement.  The effect of unequal eyesight (one eye sees better than the other) on educational performance was unclear. Myopic, hypermetropic and astigmatic students who were not wearing eyeglasses and sitting in the front scored better than their classmates (suffering the same problem and not wearing eyeglasses) who were sitting in the middle and in the back of the classroom.
 
Again, it seems that the privilege of sitting in the front has a dramatic effect on educational performance. Similarly, astigmatic students (wearing eyeglasses) who were sitting in the front achieved better scores than those sitting in the middle, with mean scores of 79.09 percent, 63 percent respectively. On the other hand, the mean scores of myopic students (wearing eyeglasses) who are sitting in the middle were 79 percent, better than of those in the front, who scored 72 percent. It seems that once myopia has been corrected, the position in class would not have negative effect on the educational performance.

For students with unequal eyesight, position in class had no influence on their performance in school (68 percent for those in the front, 65 percent for those in the middle, and 71 percent for those in the back).  These findings have not followed the trend of the other types of refractive errors, in which the eyeglasses wearing and the position in class have played an important rule in changing the students’ score dramatically. The study, supervised by Dr. Khalid Saied, Dr. Yahya Raja’a and Ibrahim al-Gorafi, who are professors in the Faculty of Medicine and Health sciences, also found that the number of family members did not have an effect on the students’ achievement in school. 

Also, family income played a role in the educational attainment of the students. The mean scores of students belonging to families with income ranging from YR35,000 to YR50,000 were significantly higher than those belonging to families with income of less than YR35,000 (68 percent and 65 percent respectively).  The lower standards of living may make parents pay less attention to their offspring’s affairs, and subsequently to their educational performance in school. The study also found a significant improvement in the mean scores of students who have fathers with higher education (69 percent) compared to the scores of those who have illiterate fathers (64 percent) or  fathers who can read and write only (66 percent).

The mean scores of students who have an illiterate mother, those having mothers who can read and write, those having mothers with secondary educational level and those having mothers with higher education were respectively 66 percent, 67 percent, 71 percent and 73 percent. So the more educated the mother, the better their children did in school. The study was conducted by Mohammed al-Jerafi, Mohammed al-Khamaisi, Salah Obaid, Abdulwahid al-Teriadi, Hafsah al-Sharafi, Najwa al-Najjar, Raghda’a al-Matheel, Wedad al-Hubaishi, Tayseer Amer and Ghallab al-Najjar.  The study made several recommendations.

These included establishing vision screening programs for children as they enter primary school and preparatory school; enhancing social awareness about the preventable causes of blindness, especially the refractive errors, through the mass media; and the founding school health committees that consist of a multidisciplinary team of classroom teachers, parents, and educational and eye care professionals to optimize the child’s learning potentials. It also recommended establishing regular instructive sessions for the teachers about the abnormal behaviors of students that may be related to vision; providing free optical services for school children; and the encouraging of scientific research.

Related Content

•  Drug use in East and South-East Asia a growing problem
•  Recap of Yemen's environmental issues in 2008
•  World Aids Day celebrations call for urgent steps to deal with disease
•  Screw Worm Fly: new threat to livestock in Yemen
•  Yemen: Gateway for early humans in their journey out of Africa
•  Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise
•  Another three-toed dinosaur walked in Arhab
•  World Toilet Day
•  Fighting AIDS and misinformation remains an international concern
•  Poverty and water discussed in recent analysis