Vision impairment when undetected early can affect the social and mental development of a child. Early detection of visual impairment can provide better prognosis and can be conducted through vision screening at pre-school. Vision screening performed using pre-school teachers would allow cost and time savings while providing greater access to perform this screening. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of vision screening conducted by pre-school teachers. A total of sixty pre-school teachers from KEMAS Tabika’s and Taska’s in the Klang Valley were randomly selected and divided into two groups i.e. a Study Group and a Control Group. The Study Group was given participative and handson vision screening training whereas the Control Group was only given brief verbal instructions on conducting the screening. Each of these pre-school teachers was asked to conduct vision screening on 15 pre-school children aged 4 to 6 years old. Trained optometrists then repeated the vision screening on the same children. The results showed that there was a higher validity in the vision screening findings from the Study Group (sensitivity = 79%, specificity = 95%) compared to the Control Group (sensitivity = 26%, specificity = 95%). The level of agreement concurrence between the pre-school teachers in the Study Group and the optometrist was high for all tests (AC1 ≥ 0.89). In conclusion, the vision screening program conducted by pre-school teachers was effective but needed proper training for the screeners. This program is seen to be able to empower pre-school teachers using vison screening techniques to allow them to identify pre-school children with vision impairment who would then require further examination and management by an eye-care professional. This program would be able to reduce the prevalence of vision impairment among pre-school children in Malaysia in the long term.
Pre-schooler ; vision screening ; vision impairment ; early detection ; teachers