ABSTRACT

Poor nutritional status is one of the major causes of low academic performance and

productivity in primary education which may affect the physical and cognitive

development in children during their early years of life. This study, therefore, assessed

anthropometric status, dietary practice and academic performance of school aged

children in lkwuano Local Government Area of Abia State. A cross sectional study

design was used. The study population consists of school aged children (6-12

ycars).Four hundred and twenty three 423 respondents (that is, 28 pupils from each

school) was systematically selected from the registered children by selecting every

fifth child that registered in each class. I)ata collection was done using a closed ended

questionnaire (pre-tested on some school aged children in Ikwuano local government

area) to collect information on the background characteristics socio-economic

characteristics of parents, information on dietary habits and their academic

performance information were obtained. A 24-hour dietary recall was used to obtain

the diversity of their diet. Anthropometric measurements of height, weight, and arm

circumference was taken. The result revealed that many (48.5%) and (45.4%) of the

children studied had medium and high dietary diversity while few (6.1%) of them had

low dietary diversity. Meal skipping was prevalent among (70.2%) of the children as

many (36.4%) and (40.0%) of the children studied had good and excellent academic

performance respectively while few (7.6%) had poor performance. Majority (96.7%,

90.5% and 87.0%) of the children have normal growth and nutritional status. Both

extremes of malnutrition were found to be coexisting in the remaining few.

Underweight and wasting were more prevalent in male (4% and 5.7%) than females

(2.8% and 4.4%) while stunting, overweight and obesity were more in the female than

male children. Younger children in this study were more overweight/obese. The study

observed that no significant relationship existed between academic performance,

nutritional status and dietary diversity (P>0.05).Scbool performance was independent

of the nutritional status and dietary diversity status of schoolchildren this may be

explained by factors including age. gender, geographical belongingness. ethnicity.

marital status, socioeconomic status (SES). parents' education level, parental

profession. language, income and religious affiliations. This study recommends urgent

preventive measures such as institution school feeding programs in all Nigerian

schools as well as nutritional education to parents and their children to forestall the

double burden of under- and over-nutrition in our setting.