To be successful children need to develop a whole range of skills before entering school. Some countries have a long tradition of using different kinds of questionnaires before entering school, but this practice is not systematically established in our country.
Presented Slovenian questionnaire in an indirect way assesses and describes the child before starting school in all the areas that are important for education, focusing on demanded skills and strengths (as indicators of exceptionality). The reliability of the questionnaire is 0,989 for the part A (skills, 104 items) and 0,944 for the part B (strengths, 16 items). We analyzed 540 children aged 3 to 7 years. The factor analysis (Oblimin rotation, delta=-0,1) (73,891% of variance explained) shows 11 factors (KMO=0,981, Bartlett's test sig.=0,00):

1. language/speech/communication/verbal memory and lexical retrieving factor,
2. constraint, concentration and rules-governed behaviour factor,
3. visual-graphical, serial, figurative factor,
4. social, interactional factor,
5. mathematical, colour concept-name, time and space orientation and concept, and numerical factor,
6. meta-literacy, meta-linguistic, phonological awareness factor,
7. motor and coordination factor,
8. organization, orderliness and assertiveness factor,
9. meta-cognitive and rhyming factor,
10. factor of autonomy in task achieving /focusing behaviour,
11. socio-pragmatic, attention, concentration and regulation of behaviour factor.

In part B for strengths 65,241% of total variance is explained (2 factors): the early development factor (55,942%) and asynchronicity, intensiveness, social loneliness, sensitiveness, frustration and perfectionism factor.
The results showed that questionnaire expose different profiles of children (non-harmonic profile, high-harmonic, low harmonic profile, typical profile), in accordance with co-morbidity, typical for particular groups of learning disabilities, like problems of coordination and attention and verbal abilities, gifted people with specific learning disabilities ... The presented questionnaire is useful for detection of high-risk characteristics that could lead to learning difficulties as well as instrument for detection of strong compensation fields.

Author(s): Martina Ozbič (Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Jerneja Novšak Brce (Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Damjana Kogovšek (Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)