Serious
long-term diseases like asthma, diabetes or epilepsy in adolescence
means extra efforts to cope everyday life in school, hobbies or at home.
These also set extra challenges on adolescents to go through the
developmental tasks of that age. We study here, if adolescents with a
long-term disease have lower chances for an academic education compared
to those without a long-term disease.

In
2011, all 7th graders in the Helsinki Metropolitan area, Finland were
invited to the MetLoFin survey (8946 students from 128 schools
answered). In 2014, all 9th graders, representing the same cohort were
invited in the end of the lower secondary school (7629; 127). The data
were linked with the national Joint Application Registry for the upper
secondary schools. Serious diseases were asthma, diabetes, epilepsy and
some other individual diseases (6%).

At
the 7th grade, the OR for continuing in vocational track or not having
got a study place instead of academic track was 1.2 for those with the
long-term disease. The difference stayed after adjusting for parents'
education and sex but disappeared after adjusting for GPA. At 9th grade,
results were similar, but the association disappeared after adjusting
for parents' education and sex.

Even
in a country like Finland, with high quality health services for
children, a long-term disease can compromise educational career, even if
the effect is small. The effect mediates mainly through GPA, which is
the main selection criteria for upper secondary school.