Educational achievement to age 11 years in children born at late preterm and early term gestations.

To investigate the effects of being born late preterm (LPT, 34-36 weeks' gestation) or early term (37-38 weeks) on children's educational achievement between ages 5 and 11 years. A series of observational studies of longitudinal linked health and education data. The Born-in-Bradford (BiB) birth cohort study, which recruited mothers during pregnancy between 2007 and 2011. The participants are children born between 2007 and 2011. Children with missing data, looked-after-children, multiple births and births post-term were excluded. The sample size varies by age according to amount of missing data, from 7860 children at age 5 years to 2386 at age 11 years (8031 at age 6 years and 5560 at age 7 years). Binary variables of whether a child reached the 'expected' level of overall educational achievement across subjects at the ages of 5, 6, 7 and 11 years. The achievement levels are measured using standardised teacher assessments and national tests. Compared with full-term births (39-41 weeks), there were significantly increased adjusted odds of children born LPT, but not early term, of failing to achieve expected levels of overall educational achievement at ages 5 years (adjusted OR (aOR) 1.72,95% CI 1.34 to 2.21) and 7 years (aOR 1.46, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.97) but not at age 11 years (aOR 1.51, 95% CI 0.99 to 2.30). Being born LPT still had statistically significant effects on writing and mathematics at age 11 years. There is a strong association between LPT and education at age 5 years, which remains strong and statistically significant through age 11 years for mathematics but not for other key subjects.

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Competing interests: CSC received financial support from the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership scholarships as part of a PhD Studentship Grant for the submitted work; KP has received a Doctoral Research Fellowship research grant from the National Institute for Health and Research, LJBH has received financial support for the National Institute of Health Research (Yorkshire and Humber Applied Research Collaboration (YH-ARC) for PhD supervision and the Medical Research Council co-investigator for the Born in Bradford birth cohort for the submitted work. LJBH has received research grants from the ESRC White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership and the Waterloo Foundation. LJBH is an expert panel member for Sports England. AH has received grant funding from the Medical Research Council/Economic and Social Research Council. CN has received grant funding from the ESRC/White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership. LS has received grant funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US Patent-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and Reach Out and Read National. LS provides consultancy for Anthem AI, and receives an honoraria for New School, Taiwan. LS provides expert testimony to the US Attorney’s Office and Morrison & Foerster.