The association between under-nutrition, school performance and perceptual motor functioning in first-grade South African learners: The North-West Child Health Integrated with Learning and Development study.

Moderate forms of stunting and wasting influence school performance and motor functioning of school beginners negatively, while an association between visual perceptual abilities and inferior mathematics, reading and writing suggests a close link with inferior cognitive information processing in stunted and wasted children. These barriers should be addressed as poor scholastic success in Grade 1 may influence future school performance and the subsequent well-being of children.