Page 1067 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 5 April 2016
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2009 and 2012 the ACT percentage of children vulnerable on one or more domains has remained relatively stable, with the 2009 results showing 22.2 per cent of children in the ACT as developmentally vulnerable on one or more domains.
I am very pleased to report that compared to the national average, the ACT has a lower percentage of children developmentally vulnerable in each of the five domains except physical health and wellbeing. That pleasing result has remained consistent since the 2012 results.
Since the data started to be collected in 2009 ACT children are shown to be consistently less vulnerable when compared to their Australian peers in the communication and general knowledge, social competence and language and cognitive skills domains. Continuing the trend seen in previous collection years, the language and cognitive skills domain remains the strongest domain for our ACT children. This means most children are starting school with a strong foundation of basic literacy and numeracy skills.
We know that children in the ACT are most likely to be vulnerable on the physical health and wellbeing domain, which measures children’s fine and gross motor skills; physical readiness for the school day, such as being dressed appropriately for school activities; and coming to school late, hungry or tired.
Of course, we are interested not just in how Canberra’s children are faring in relation to their Australian peers, but also in how Canberra’s children are faring over time. In 2015 we have seen some increases in the percentage of children developmentally vulnerable in three out of the five domains. We will be carefully watching this over the coming collection cycles to observe trends. The value of this data is, however, that it clearly shows us where to focus our collective efforts.
The Australian early development census also gives us information on how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are faring, both nationally and across the ACT. Whilst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are more likely to be developmentally vulnerable than their non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peers, the 2015 results show that in the ACT there has been a small decrease in this vulnerability since 2012.
This reduction in vulnerability is a trend I would like to see continued. In particular, I am pleased to report that there has been a statistically significant improvement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the emotional maturity domain since 2012. However, there has been a statistically significant increase in developmental vulnerability for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the physical health and wellbeing domain and in the language and cognitive skills domain.
It is important to note that the small number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kindergarten children in the ACT—that is, 152 children in 2015—makes this data more prone to larger fluctuations between census years. However, it does show us that there is still a significant amount of work to do to close this gap in the ACT.
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