ECHE/ECHX6020 EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Assessment Task : AEDC Analysis report

Background: The 2021 Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) report indicates that nationally 21.5% of children are either vulnerable or at risk on the physical health and wellbeing domain. In NSW, 9.4% of children are vulnerable and 12.4% of children are at risk on this domain.

Children who are vulnerable or at-risk experience challenges that interfere with their capacity to cope with the school day and to maximise their learning potential.

Task: You will be required to analyse the AEDC data for two (2) Local Government Areas (LGAs) to identify the proportion of children identified as on track, vulnerable or at risk.

You will be required to provide the National, State (NSW) data as well as LGA data for Ryde and Leeton. The information will be presented in a table and include the data for the five domains (Physical health & Wellbeing; Social competence; Emotional maturity; Language & cognitive skills; Communication & general knowledge). The following data will be required:

Percentage of children on track for each domain

Percentage of children at risk for each domain

Percentage of vulnerable children for each domain Percentage of children vulnerable on 1 domain

Percentage of children vulnerable on 2 or more domains

For one of the LGAs (Ryde or Leeton), you are required to select one local community/suburb for further analysis. You will research this community in more depth to identify associated demographic and other factors that may influence children’s developmental outcomes on school entry for children in the community, i.e. factors that may contribute to children being at-risk or vulnerable. Some of this information can be found on the AEDC website but you will need to go beyond this to research your chosen local community (Hint: local Council websites often also provide demographic information as well as information about community resources but there will be other relevant information available from other sources).

Based on this analysis you will identify one specific developmental domain (physical health and wellbeing or social competence or emotional maturity or language) which will be the focus of your final assignment and provide a brief rationale for this selection.