Primary School Years

BiB researchers are visiting children in Years 3, 4 and 5 in Bradford Primary Schools to conduct assessments of learning ability, working memory capacity, and well-being.

The assessments will indicate which children are struggling in class and will pick up where their difficulties lie, for example in their fine motor control, or their working memory. These assessments are free to Bradford schools.

The assessments are presented to the children as ‘games’ using a special touch-screen computer and stylus pen. For motor skills, children will complete 3 tasks that measure the kind of fine motor skills needed for handwriting, drawing and using scissors:

1. A ‘tracing’ task where the child follows a path on screen with the stylus pen while staying within the lines of the path shown
2. A ‘tracking’ task where the child follows a dot moving around the screen in a figure-of-8 pattern
3. An ‘aiming’ task where the child follows a dot by moving the pen, as the dot moves quickly from one position to another

Memory is measured by asking the child to remember a sequence of numbers and to keep them in their memory whilst doing other tasks.

How quickly a child can process information is measured by asking them to count the number of red circles on the screen as fast as they can.

The children will also be asked to fill in a short questionnaire about their well-being and happiness. The questions ask them about how they feel about their lives, about their family and where they live, their schools, their friends, about the kinds of things they own (clothes, phones) and the kind of job they would like as an adult. None of these questions are distressing to answer. The questionnaire is done under the supervision of the class teacher and our researchers; it takes 15 minutes to complete.

For more information have a look at the Information Sheets for Parents, Children and Teachers.

What happens to the information?

• The assessments will be kept confidential and will only be used for research.
• We would like to link the results of these assessments to routinely collected education data collected by the school.
• All the information will be held by the Born in Bradford study and will be stored with a study code (rather than a name) so that it will not be possible for anyone to see information connected to your child.
• Assessment information will be analysed anonymously and results will be reported anonymously so it will not be possible to identify an individual child.