Educational attainments of school leavers with a preschool history of speech-language impairments

This paper reports a follow-up study of a cohort of 16- and 17-year-olds wi th a preschool history of speech-language impairment and whom Bishop and Ed mundson (1987) originally studied. Information collected by questionnaire s howed that the GCSE grades of those whose language impairments had resolved by 5;06 were below those of age-matched controls. However, the number of G CSE examinations entered and passed was significantly more than those of th e 'persistent S-LI' and 'general delay' groups. Overall, IQ was the strange st predictor of educational attainment. However, even when IQ was controlle d, literacy skills accounted for independent variance in achievement, espec ially among those with a history of language difficulty. The survey also no ted that the majority of students across all groups remained in full-time e ducation; however, the adolescents with a background of S-LI were more like ly to follow vocational and employment training courses rather than A-level s.