What's the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC)?
The AEDC is a national, population-based measure of children’s development in their first year of school. Every three years, first-year-of-school teachers across Australia complete a questionnaire instrument for each child in their class. This instrument measures five domains of early childhood development: physical health and wellbeing; social competence; emotional maturity; language and cognitive skills; and communication skills and general knowledge.
Community-level AEDC results are available publicly through the AEDC website. Early learning services and schools are encouraged to access and understand their community’s AEDC results, and plan actions to support local children and families.
Latest AEDC results
On March 22 2019, Education Minister Dan Tehan released AEDC data for 2018 which showed that, in Australia’s most disadvantaged communities, 32.3 per cent of children were rated developmentally vulnerable on one or more of the AEDC domains.
How can Be You help address
AEDC data?
Be You is a mental health and wellbeing initiative, growing Australia’s most mentally healthy generation. A child’s mental health and wellbeing influences, and is influenced by, all areas of a child’s development.
One way that Be You can assist in addressing the latest AEDC data is by increasing the knowledge, skills and confidence of educators in the teaching of social and emotional skills and fostering children’s resilience – skills and dispositions which directly relate to the social competence and emotional maturity domains of the AEDC. Be You’s Professional Learning domain Learning Resilience is designed to do exactly this.
First action to address AEDC data
Through Be You, there are many ways education settings across communities can work together to take positive actions to address AEDC data. Register your service or school for Be You today and encourage other education settings in your community to do the same. Your Be You Consultant can help you to tailor Be You to address developmental vulnerability in your community.
Registering with Be You is quick, easy – and free!
If you want more information, contact us.