Every three years, the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) measures how five-year-olds are tracking across five developmental domains when they start school. The 2024 results, released in March 2025, delivered a clear message for Western Australia: we are going backwards, and faster than the rest of the country.
For ECEC service leaders, these results are not just a government statistic. They are a direct reflection of the conditions children experienced in their earliest years — the very years our sector is responsible for shaping. This article unpacks what the data shows, what is driving it, and what it means for how we lead our services.
The headline findings
The Commissioner's 2026 Profile report, which draws on data current to February 2026, paints a consistent and concerning picture. Across every AEDC domain, WA saw roughly twice the national decline between 2021 and 2024. The biggest drops were in social competence (down 4.6% in WA versus 1.9% nationally) and emotional maturity (down 4.1% versus 2.2% nationally).
These are not abstract numbers. Social competence and emotional maturity are the domains that determine whether a child can navigate a classroom — whether they can manage transitions, regulate their emotions under pressure, engage with peers, follow group routines, and persist when things are difficult. They are foundational not just for learning, but for belonging.
A widening equity gap. The national AEDC data shows that Aboriginal children are nearly twice as likely to be developmentally vulnerable at school entry — 42.5% vulnerable on one or more domains, compared with 23.5% for all children. Only 33.9% of Aboriginal children are on track across all five domains. Children in very remote areas and boys are also significantly more likely to be behind their peers before they even begin school.
The report also highlights a sharp rise in the proportion of WA children needing special help with emotions, concentration, behaviour, or getting along with others — tripling from 8.2% in 2015 to 25.3% in 2024. For children aged 10–15, it is now 34.5%. The Commissioner is clear: the trajectory starts in early childhood, and it is worsening.
Why is WA declining faster than the rest of Australia?
The Commissioner does not offer a single definitive cause — and neither should we. But the report points to a significant contributing factor: the stagnation of early childhood programs that were specifically designed to support children's social and emotional development before school entry.
Between 2009 and 2018, WA invested in a suite of early childhood programs — Child and Parent Centres, KindiLink in public schools, and additional support for parent-run playgroups. The AEDC data shows that this investment worked. WA's results improved steadily from 2009 to 2018, moving from below the national average to above it.
"Except for one more Child and Parent Centre in 2022, these programs have not expanded even though WA is the fastest growing state in Australia."
Commissioner for Children and Young People WA, Profile Report 2026, p.37WA's population of children and young people grew by nearly 73,000 in the decade to 2025, yet the infrastructure for supporting their earliest development has barely moved. Meanwhile, childcare participation — while improving — still sits below the national average at 41.9% of 0–5 year olds, compared with 50.4% nationally.
The two-year-old health check provides another telling data point. Less than one-third of metropolitan children and fewer than half of regional children received their two-year-old check in 2024. Of those who did, nearly a third showed developmental concerns requiring monitoring or referral. The system for identifying and addressing early developmental issues is only reaching a fraction of the children who need it.
What this means for your service
There is a temptation when reading data like this to locate the problem elsewhere — in families, in government, in under-resourced communities. And while systemic investment is absolutely needed, leaders who wait for that investment before acting are missing what is already in their power.
Social and emotional learning needs to be explicit curriculum
The AEDC domains that dropped most sharply — social competence and emotional maturity — are the domains most directly shaped by quality early childhood practice. They are not soft outcomes or nice-to-haves. The Commissioner is explicit: they need the same level of deliberate, explicit attention in curriculum planning as literacy and numeracy.
What does this look like in practice? It means your program planning actively names and sequences opportunities for self-regulation, cooperative play, emotional literacy, and conflict navigation. It means educators are supported to understand child development deeply enough to scaffold these skills intentionally, not just respond to them reactively. It means reflection processes ask: how are we tracking on the social and emotional development of the children in our care?
Observation is now a public health function
With two-thirds of metropolitan children not receiving their two-year-old health check, ECEC services are increasingly the only setting where developmental concerns can be systematically identified. If a child is struggling with communication, emotional regulation, or social engagement, your educators may be the first — and sometimes only — adults positioned to notice and act.
This is not about educators becoming clinicians. It is about ensuring that your observation frameworks, your documentation practices, and your referral pathways are robust enough to catch what might otherwise be missed. The Commissioner's report draws a direct line between unaddressed concerns at age two and the AEDC results we are now seeing at age five.
Family engagement is upstream prevention
Over 15% of WA children now live below the poverty line — approximately 103,900 children. Single-parent families are nearly five times more likely to be missing basic material necessities than couple families. The data on family and domestic violence shows a stark 18% increase in recorded offences in WA in 2024–25.
Children's developmental trajectories cannot be separated from the conditions their families are experiencing. Services that build genuine, non-judgemental family partnerships, that reduce practical barriers to participation, and that connect families to broader support are doing prevention work with measurable downstream impact on exactly the outcomes the AEDC is measuring.
Questions for your service — right now
- How explicitly does our curriculum plan for social competence and emotional maturity — not just as values, but as scheduled, scaffolded learning?
- What is our process when an educator has a developmental concern about a child? Is it documented, is it acted on, and does it reach families promptly?
- Are our referral pathways current? Do educators know who to contact, and is the process straightforward enough that it actually gets used?
- How are we supporting families experiencing financial stress, family violence, or housing instability? Are we connecting families, not just educating children?
- How are Aboriginal children and families experiencing our service? Are we actively addressing the equity gaps the AEDC data reveals?
- Are we advocating — to our community, our networks, and government — for the investment in early childhood that this data clearly demands?
The case for advocacy
The Commissioner's report does not mince words: "Things will not get better on their own." For service leaders, this is both a challenge and a call to action. The evidence for investing in early childhood — in programs, in workforce, in family support — is overwhelming and well-documented. The data in this report strengthens that case further.
ECEC leaders are not just service operators. We are practitioners with deep expertise in child development and family wellbeing, operating at the coalface of outcomes that policymakers measure from a distance. Our voice in advocacy conversations matters — and this data gives us sharp, current, WA-specific evidence to make the case.
EYL Networx exists precisely to support this kind of informed, collective leadership. The full Directors Brief for March 2026 includes a one-page summary of the key data points and a framework for using this report in team professional learning and in conversations with families, committees, and funders.
Source: Commissioner for Children and Young People WA (2026). Profile of Children and Young People in WA 2026. ISSN: 2652-4694. Perth: Commissioner for Children and Young People WA. Data current as of 13 February 2026. Full report available at ccyp.wa.gov.au
One-page summary of key statistics with ECEC sector implications — free PDF, ready to share with your team.