Professor of Visual Development, School of Optometry & Vision Science
University of Bradford
United Kingdom
Brendan Barrett is an Optometrist by first training and holds a BSc degree in Psychology. His optometry training was undertaken in Dublin, where he also completed his Ph.D. After a brief stint working as a lecturer in Glasgow Caledonian University in the mid-1990s, he moved to the county of Yorkshire, in the north of England, to take up a position at the University of Bradford. He has been based there ever since. His current position is Professor of Visual Development in the School of Optometry & Vision Science at the University. Alongside his teaching commitments, his research interests include amblyopia and other developmental disorders of vision. He has conducted research in the area of vision and sport, specifically examining the question of whether there may be something elite about the vision of elite sportspeople. He is also interested in quantifying the extent to which significant uncorrected refractive error exists in school children, and in understanding how this may impact their educational attainment. Aside from research and teaching, he holds accreditation responsibilities for the UK’s General Optical Council and for the European Council of Optometry and Optics (ECOO), acting as a co-chair of ECOO’s Accreditation Agency.
Glasses in Classes – A UK Initiative
In this lecture, I will provide a description of the Glasses in Classes project, the first and second iterations of which have now concluded. As recommended by Public Health England, vision screening takes place in primary schools at age 4/5 years (i.e. in reception class) in many, though far from all, areas in England. However, even when this screening takes place, there are a variety of reasons why children may not receive the refractive treatment they require. The reasons include the fact that the orthoptic screening team is normally not permitted to share results of the screening with the school; hence school personnel are not aware which children should be taken for follow-up examination following the screening. We know that many children who fail screening are not taken for follow-up examination and that even those who are, many end up not getting or wearing the glasses they were prescribed. The aim of the Glasses in Classes (GiC) project was to try to ensure that children who fail school vision screening are taken for follow-up eye examination and that those children who need glasses actually end up wearing them whilst at school.
The essential features of the GiC project are as follows: (i) The school is informed about which children did not pass the school vision screening; (ii) Parents of these children are encouraged to bring their child for a follow-up eye examination by a vision co-ordinator (SVC) who is a member of school staff; (iii) for those children not brought for follow-up eye examination with a particular time period, the school allows an Optometrist to visit the school to conduct the eye examinations and where necessary issue glasses there; (iv) All children in the GiC project receive a 2nd pair of glasses free of charge. The 2nd pair remains at school and the 2nd pair is issued to children if, for any reason, they arrive at school not wearing their glasses; (v) The SVC monitors the compliance with glasses wear amongst the GiC children; (vi) The impact on the education of the GiC children was studied by comparing their education scores at the beginning and end of the study period.
The GiC project has a much wider context which will also be briefly considered during the talk, namely that the prevalence of refractive error amongst UK school children appears to be growing. Also, we now have greater evidence about related questions regarding the uptake of eye examinations by school children and about the impact that uncorrected refractive error may be having upon a child’s education. I will also describe our latest, wider initiative which aims to train lay, school-personnel to conduct basic eye and vision checks in their children and the approaches that we hope to take to gather the evidence that they will lead to better educational outcomes in children with uncorrected refractive error.
Learning Objectives
- To summarise the methodology and findings from the Glasses in Classes study
- To briefly summarise the literature that links educational attainment with the presence of uncorrected refractive error in school children.
- To summarise the feasibility and accuracy of the approaches that we are currently taking to train school personnel to conduct basic eye and vision checks of their children.