Quality Early Education for All

was the same as in 2012 and an improvement on 2009 (76.4 per cent).
• Twenty two per cent of children are developmentally vulnerable on one or more domain.
• 11.1 per cent are developmentally vulnerable on two or more domains.
Figure 7: Trends in rates of developmental vulnerability 2009-2015
25
23
21
19
17
15
13
11
9
Physical
Social
Emotional
Language
Communication
Vuln 1
Vuln 2
7
5
2009 2012 2015
Source: Australian Government, 2016
Although nearly 80 per cent of children are not developmentally vulnerable, there are highly variable patterns
across the country (Table 4) and clear patterns of locational disavantage (Vinson et al, 2015):
• Eighty per cent of children living in major cities are developing well, compared to just over half of children in
very remote areas.
• Children living in the least socio-economically disadvantaged Australian communities are most likely to be on
track on each of the AEDC domains.
• Under 16 per cent of children living in the least socio-economically disadvantaged Australian communities are
developmentally vulnerable on one or more of the AEDC domain/s, compared with nearly 33 per cent of
children in the most disadvantaged communities.
• Children from a language background other than English are more likely to be developmentally vulnerable,
although their level of vulnerability reduces significantly if they are proficient in English.
Quality Early Education for All 27