Judy Turner: Short-changed by shortsighted tests

Judy Turner

In the next week, parents will send their children off to school full of hope and optimism. Included in this number will be some 55,000 new-starts, who are entering school gates for the first time.

Few parents would have chosen their children's schools without considerable thought about facilities, staff and educational programmes. Thus, they would be horrified to realise that as many as 12 children in a class of 30 - or 40 per cent - may be slipping through the Government-funded school vision and hearing screening tests with undetected problems.

That frightening figure was revealed in a study conducted by just one conscientious teacher, who was not convinced that her students' eyesight was as good as the tests had indicated.

In both educational and health terms, the damage done, the lessons not learned, and the reading skills not developed by the 5-year-olds who will falsely pass this test are a tragedy.

How many years will they go before being falsely burdened with the tag of under-achiever? How many of their parents' hopes and their future opportunities will be lost because they cannot read the blackboard?

Before entering Parliament, I was a teacher and I admit that I gave considerable credence to the vision and hearing tests, as teachers everywhere do. Looking back, I wish I hadn't. I would have had good cause to reassess the reasons behind the under-performance of a number of students, to reassess why their reading skills were poor or their behaviour in class a problem.

Teachers, parents and students owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Kelly Scarrow, an innovative teacher at Castlecliff School in Wanganui, who did not take these results for granted.

While dealing with under-performing children who had passed the vision and hearing tests, she carried out her own two-year trial. Of 71 children she sent to an optometrist, 28 were found to need glasses, and a further 16 (23 per cent) required further testing in 12 months.

These figures reinforce the results of a major, yet little publicised, study in Rotorua schools in 1999-2000.

Parents and teachers need to know these facts. They need to know that when their children pass the school vision and hearing tests at 5 and 11, this does not actually mean they can see and hear well. Only certain conditions are tested for.

The reality is that the screening programme does not test for long-sightedness or eye co-ordination problems, and that one Australian study indicated that the type of tests carried out here detect less than 10 per cent of vision problems in children.

Unfortunately, there is a huge resistance at the Government and bureaucracy levels to doing anything about this. I intend to continue to push for a select committee inquiry into the testing regime that serves our children so badly, and leads to such a false sense of security. The Castlecliff School experience suggests that of this year's 55,000 5-year-olds, up to 22,000 could have their education and health at risk if we rely on this flawed testing regime.

Questions need to be asked about why parents do not receive accurate information about the limitations of the programme. More pointed questions need to be asked of the Ministry of Health, which funds district health boards to administer the programme, and the Ministry of Education.

Last March, Education Minister Trevor Mallard conceded he had no confidence that the screening programme was operating as effectively as it could and admitted that, with only about 95 vision and hearing technicians nationally, the programme lacked the staff to ensure children had good vision and hearing.

On average, the tests take about 90 seconds. The vision part of the test is designed to identify short-sightedness and lazy eye. If your child is long-sighted, or has eye co-ordination problems - crucial to reading - you will not find out.

Optometrists are expressing considerable concern at the increasing number of 8- and 9-year-olds who have significant problems that have clearly gone undiagnosed for some time.

Are the tests even good enough at picking up the limited number of conditions that they aim to pick up? Who knows - certainly not the Government. The Health Ministry says the programme has not been studied or reviewed in the past 10 years. In that time, more than 500,000 children have been through it.

Recent reviews of screening programmes, such as that for cervical cancer, have stressed such programmes are only as good as their evaluation. Our children's health and education prospects certainly deserve that level of care.

In the past decade, we have accepted the challenge of ensuring children have the correct nutrition to learn successfully. It is time to apply the same level of attention to such a basic building block of health as eyesight and hearing.

It is time we cast a discerning and critical eye over the national vision and hearing screening programme.

* Judy Turner is deputy leader of the United Future party.