The influence of nutritional status on school performance

PURPOSE:to analyze the relationship between nutritional status and school performance of children in the 4th year of elementary school of one public school in Belo Horizonte assisted by the School Health Program.METHODS:it is cross-sectional descriptive study accomplished with 59 students rated as to the school performance and nutritional status through the School Performance Test and the Body Mass Index by age - BMI / A, respectively. The analysis of the data were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 14.0 and for the anthropometric analysis the software Who Anthro Plus, version 1.0.4.RESULTS:from the researched children, the average age was 9.4 years (±0,85), which 34 (57,6%) male gender. The anthropometric rating revealed that 45 children (76.3%) are eutrophic, one (1.7%) is undernourished and 13 (22%) are weighing more than expected, according to WHO standards. The Student performance in the written test TDE was rated as lower (74.6%), medium (15.3%) andsuperior (10.2%). In the reading test 79.7% achieved lower results, 16.9% medium and 3.4% superior and in the arithmetic test 78.0% were classified as having underperformed, 16.9% medium and 5.1% superior, respectively. It was observed a statistically significance between poorer performance on tasks of writing and arithmetic and overweight (p< 0.05).CONCLUSION:the study revealed low school performance in most children, and the children that were overweight had a worse outcome at writing and arithmetic.