Biocultural Factors in School Achievement for Mopan Children in Belize

Mayan children in Belize face a number of challenges to school success. Their families are the poorest of the poor, and the Mopan children in this study exhibit poor growth and poor school achievement. But a direct relationship between growth and school achievement was evident only for current nutritional status, not for nutritional history. A combination of quantitative and qualitative data revealed that school achievement for these Mopan children may relate more to family attributes and attitudes than to health and nutritional status. The strongest predictors of school achievement were father's literacy and grade level in school.