EDUCATIONAL CAPACITY OF LOW-BIRTH-WEIGHT CHILDREN UP TO THE AGE OF 24

Participation in further education after compulsory schooling was exam ined for 377 LBW (low birth weight, < 2500 g) and 10 614 NBW (normal b irth weight, greater than or equal to 2500 g) children and completion of this further education among the same population in a 1-year birth cohort for Northern Finland in 1966. There was no difference in enroll ment for further education, the percentage for non-enrollment was 8.5% for LBW and 7.0% for NBW children, and the healthy LBW children even enrolled more often than the healthy NBW children. Enrollment among th e disabled LBW children, however, was significantly poorer than among the disabled NBW children, 57.1% and 36.8%, respectively failing to en roll. The disabled LBW girls in particular enrolled poorly, 76.9% of t hem failing to do so. Completing further studies up to the age of 24 w as rarer among the LBW children than among the NBW children, 17.6% of them failing to graduate compared to 13.8% of the NBW children. If the disabled children were excluded, however, the healthy LBW children su cceeded as well as the healthy NBW children. The LBW girls, especially the disabled ones, graduated the least often. When excluding the disa bled children and controlling confounding variables by stratification, low birth weight did not affect non-enrollment or non-graduation. Alt ogether, the success of the LBW children in their post compulsory educ ation was satisfactory except for the disabled LBW children, especiall y the girls.