Australian five-year olds are developing significantly better than they were three years ago across a range of key indicators, according to a new report released by the Australian Early Development Index (AEDI).

Federal Minister for Early Childhood, Peter Garrett, welcomed the 2012 data, which showed that Australian children were showing sound improvements in the development of social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills, and communication and general knowledge skills. Results in physical health and wellbeing have remained steady since the last testing conducted in 2009.

Data was collected in May 2012 on nearly 290,000 children, representing 96.5 per cent of children in their first year of formal full-time school.

“The results showed that since the first round of data was collected, the work that communities and governments have been doing to better support children and families has been paying off,” Mr Garrett said.

“Research shows that investing time, effort and resources in children’s early years, when their brains are developing rapidly, benefits them and the whole community.

“Australia is the only country in the world that collects this level of information about health, well-being and development of our children before they enter school. Communities have been able to use this data to develop new programs for children and their families, and deliver extra, targeted help to children at risk.

“The overall national improvement means that over the next five years as they hit school age, we can expect 24,000 more children to start their school life better prepared.”

Key findings from the 2012 AEDI data include:

  • The number of children who are developmentally vulnerable in one or more areas has fallen since 2009, to 22 per cent – a 1.6 per cent improvement.
  • In four of the five areas, Australian children are doing better than they were in 2009 – that is, there are fewer children who are developmentally vulnerable in each of these four areas.
  • Indigenous children are showing significant signs of progress. In 2012, 43.2 per cent of children were developmentally vulnerable, down from 47.4 per cent in 2009. While this figure is still far too high, it is a strong improvement in just three years.
  • QLD and the Northern Territory showed the most improvement. In QLD, there has been a decrease in the number of developmentally vulnerable children of 3.4 per cent, and in the NT, of 3.2 per cent.
  • The greatest level of national improvement was in the language and cognitive development domain with 6.8 per cent of children reported as developmentally vulnerable in 2012, compared to 8.9 per cent in 2009.

The full report can be found here