Understanding the Australian Early Development Census
Resources for early childhood education and care services

The Australian Early Development Census or AEDC provides important information at a community level about the development of Australia's children as they start school. The data is collected by prep teachers about each child in their first year of full time school. The AEDC measures five key areas or domains of children's development, physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills, communication skills and general knowledge.

Each of these five domains is broken down into sub-domains. For example the language and cognitive development domain has four sub-domains: basic literacy, interest in literacy, numeracy and memory, advanced literacy and basic numeracy. For each domain children are assessed as on track, at risk or developmentally vulnerable. The community results table shows the proportion of children developmentally vulnerable. Children who are developmentally vulnerable demonstrate a much lower than average ability in the competencies in that domain.

The results are also reported as the proportion of children developmentally vulnerable on one or more domains and two or more domains. Areas shaded in lighter blue have lower proportions of developmentally vulnerable children. Areas shaded in darker blues have higher proportions of developmentally vulnerable children.

AEDC results are collated and reported at a local community, community, state territory and national level. The AEDC community profile is a key document for early childhood services. It provides a breakdown of the results by community and local community across the five domains and sub-domains. The AEDC data provides a common language for early childhood services to discuss the needs of young children with their local schools and communities, particularly in supporting children's successful transition to school.

There are clear links between the AEDC and the National Quality Standard and the Early Years Learning Frameworks learning outcomes. Early childhood services can therefore use the AEDC data to help inform programming, planning and quality improvement. The data is provided at a community level as a whole of community approach is known to improve children's outcomes. Working collaboratively is more likely to be successful in improving children's outcomes in the community than one service working alone.

For more information on the AEDC please visit www.aedc.gov.au  or www.dete.qld.gov.au/earlychildhood.