What We Talk About When We Talk About School Readiness
The question that led us to early childhood education.
Most parents want the same simple thing: to know their child is growing, settling, connecting and ready for what comes next.
In 2024, a report stopped us in our tracks. According to the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), only 52.9% of Australian children were fully developmentally on track when they started school.¹
But what does that actually mean?
The AEDC does not measure school readiness only through literacy, numeracy or academic skills. It looks across five developmental domains: Physical Health & Wellbeing, Social Competence, Emotional Maturity, Language & Cognitive Skills, and Communication Skills & General Knowledge.
In other words, school readiness is not only about what children know. It is also about how they participate, relate, communicate and manage themselves in a learning environment.
That matters because being “not fully on track” is not just a label on a report. For some children, it can follow them into the school years.
When Early Vulnerability Follows Children Into School
Research conducted by the Centre for Adolescent Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute found that children who begin school developmentally vulnerable are more likely to fall within the lowest-performing 20 per cent of students in literacy and numeracy throughout their school years.³
By Year 3, these children are, on average, around one year behind their peers. By Year 5, that gap increases to approximately two years. The Front Project’s 2022 report, citing this research, also notes that around half of these children never fully catch up.³
Research cited by the Mitchell Institute at Victoria University has linked developmental vulnerability with lower rates of school completion, reduced participation in work and study during early adulthood, and poorer health outcomes later in life.⁴ Up to one in ten developmentally vulnerable children are estimated to be not fully engaged in work or study by age 24, and adults disengaged from education and employment are more than twice as likely to experience poor health compared with working adults.⁴
School readiness is therefore not a small early-years label. It is one of the earliest visible signals of a child’s developmental trajectory.
For us, that made the five AEDC domains worth looking at more closely — not only to see whether children were on track, but to understand where the concern was most clearly appearing.
The Pattern Across Three Domains
When we examined the Victorian data, the weakest areas were not the most obviously academic or physical ones. They were Social Competence, Emotional Maturity, and Communication Skills & General Knowledge.
In each of these three domains, approximately one in four Victorian children was not developmentally on track when they started school.² They were also the domains with the clearest decline since 2021. Social Competence fell from 77.8% to 74.8%, Emotional Maturity fell from 78.4% to 75.0%, and Communication Skills & General Knowledge fell from 79.0% to 76.6%.²
By comparison, Physical Health & Wellbeing and Language & Cognitive Skills remained higher overall and declined less sharply over the same period.²
So the pattern was not only that these three domains were lower. It was that they were lower, declining faster, and all connected to how children relate, communicate and manage themselves.
Seen together, the three results suggest more than coincidence. They point toward the possibility of a shared underlying capability.
A Possible Explanation
Developmental psychologist Dr Clancy Blair has argued that school readiness is not simply about what children know. It is also about whether children can regulate their attention, emotions and behaviour sufficiently to engage in learning.⁶
Researchers often describe this underlying capability as Self-Regulation. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University defines self-regulation as the ability to manage emotions, behaviour and attention in pursuit of longer-term goals.⁵
Self-regulation influences how children manage frustration, listen, wait, communicate, build relationships and remain engaged when something becomes difficult.
Viewed through this lens, Social Competence, Emotional Maturity and Communication Skills may not be three unrelated concerns. They may be different expressions of a common underlying capability.
To understand the longer-term significance of that capability, it helps to look beyond school-entry data and into longitudinal research.
Self-Regulation Across Life
The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study has followed 1,037 New Zealand children born in 1972–73 for more than fifty years.⁷
In 2011, researchers led by Professor Terrie Moffitt examined the relationship between childhood self-control and adult outcomes. They found that stronger childhood self-control was associated with better adult physical health, greater financial stability, and lower rates of substance dependence and criminal offending.⁸
These relationships remained significant even after accounting for intelligence and family socioeconomic background.⁸ That point matters: self-regulation was not simply a reflection of IQ or privilege. It emerged as a predictor of life outcomes in its own right.
Self-regulation begins as an early childhood capability, but its influence can reach well beyond childhood.
That finding changes the way we think about early development. It also makes the next issue more hopeful: self-regulation is not simply fixed at birth.
The Encouraging News
Researchers at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University have concluded that self-regulation is not determined solely by genetics. It develops through relationships, experiences and repeated opportunities to practise these skills over time.⁹ Harvard describes self-regulation as one of the foundations for learning, behaviour and lifelong health.⁹
This changes the nature of the problem. The capabilities underpinning emotional maturity, social competence and communication are not simply traits children either have or do not have. They can be strengthened, supported and developed through the right kinds of repeated experience.
For early childhood education, that shifts the focus from explanation to practice.
Designing the Practice Environment
Self-regulation is not developed through explanation alone. Children learn by practising it in real situations, with trusted adults beside them.
Psychologist Professor Anders Ericsson, known for his work on Deliberate Practice, argued that improvement does not come from repetition alone. It depends on the quality, structure and feedback within the practice itself.¹⁰
For early learning environments, the implication is straightforward: if self-regulation develops through practice, then the environment must provide practice that is frequent, meaningful, relational and supported.
This is one of the reasons nature-based daily routines sit at the centre of the Eco Patch learning environment. They are not the whole answer, but they create repeated, real situations where children can practise the capabilities discussed above.
When a child waters the garden each day, they are not simply completing a task. They observe change, wait for growth, build expectation, experience success and sometimes face disappointment when things do not go as hoped. With adult support, disappointment becomes something children can understand, prepare for and move through.
Caring for animals creates another kind of practice. Small daily interactions with living things give children opportunities to practise gentleness, empathy, responsibility and awareness of another being’s needs. Children learn that living things are active, responsive, sometimes unpredictable and sometimes vulnerable.
These experiences are ordinary, but not accidental. They are designed to appear repeatedly in the rhythm of the day, giving children real opportunities to practise patience, communication, responsibility and emotional regulation.
This is what we mean by real feelings, real experiences and real relationships.
Some Final Thoughts
If you've read this far, chances are you're the kind of parent who cares deeply about your child's future.
So do we.
The purpose of sharing this research is not to create anxiety. It is to start a conversation.
Because behind every statistic is a child.
And behind every child is a family trying to make the best decisions they can.
We do not claim to have all the answers. But we do believe that understanding the problem is the first step toward solving it.
If the questions raised in this article resonate with you, we'd love to continue the conversation.
Whether you're exploring early learning for the first time or simply curious about how children develop capabilities such as self-regulation, emotional maturity and social confidence, you're always welcome to visit, ask questions and see how we think about learning.
Book a complimentary centre tour or give us a call. We'd love to meet you and your family.
References
1. Australian Early Development Census (AEDC). 2024 AEDC National Report. Australian Government Department of Education.
2. Australian Early Development Census (AEDC). Victoria Results 2024.
3. The Front Project. Supporting All Children to Thrive: The Importance of Equity in Early Childhood Education (2022), citing research from the Centre for Adolescent Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
4. Lamb, S., Jackson, J., Walstab, A., & Huo, S. (2015). Educational Opportunity in Australia 2015: Who Succeeds and Who Misses Out. Mitchell Institute, Victoria University.
Lamb, S., & Huo, S. (2017). Counting the Costs of Lost Opportunity in Australian Education. Mitchell Institute, Victoria University.
5. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Executive Function & Self-Regulation.
6. Blair, C., & Razza, R. P. (2007). Relating Effortful Control, Executive Function, and False Belief Understanding to Emerging Math and Literacy Ability in Kindergarten. Child Development, 78(2), 647–663.
7. Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, University of Otago.
8. Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., et al. (2011). A Gradient of Childhood Self-Control Predicts Health, Wealth, and Public Safety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(7), 2693–2698.
9. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Control” System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function. Working Paper No. 11 (2011).
10. Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406.