Early years literacy a national shame
I am so not a political animal, but we have a problem in ‘the lucky country’ that is going unheeded. Our children’s language and literacy skills are going backwards at a time when every bit of research is telling us that literacy is critical to long term educational, economic, social and health outcomes.
Last month (August 2025) the results from the 2024 Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) were released and they show that the language and cognitive skills of young children commencing school were declining, with the proportion of children in Australia’s two largest states (NSW and Victoria) rated as being ‘developmentally vulnerable’ or ‘at risk’ hitting record levels. Nationally, 18.3% or nearly 1 in 5 children commencing their journey through school are not ready to learn in term of language and cognitive skills. https://www.aedc.gov.au/resources/detail/2024-aedc-national-report
When the three-yearly AEDC was first conducted in 2009 NSW and Victoria both had around 83-84% of children ‘on track’ in language and cognitive skills, with 10% ‘at risk’ and 6% ‘developmentally vulnerable’. Over the following years those figures stayed pretty much the same or improved slightly. The 2021 AEDC was conducted in the middle of the COVID period and the 2% drop in the proportion of children ‘on track’ was attributed to restricted access to early learning centres and kindergartens. Don’t worry, nothing to see here, it will bounce back next time.
Well – it hasn’t. The downward trend continues and we now find 16.9% of school starters in NSW and 17.9% in Victoria were classified in the ‘risk’ categories in the 2024 AEDC. If a key part of our lives is supposed to be leaving our kids better off than we were, then we are failing them.
Which is, of course, where public libraries come in. If Australia’s libraries are known for anything, other than ‘free books’, it is their Early Years (EY) programming. Every Council annual report has a colourful picture of young children and their parents at a Story Time or Baby Bounce session, smiling and dancing as the librarian reads them a story or two (or six). And we have observed the library sector’s EY programming improving significantly over the years, so that in most cases we now see the dual focus in action with the session being fun and engaging for the toddlers while simultaneously parents are being modelled good behaviours for reading at home and engaging orally with their child.
Because home is where the magic has to happen. Language development cannot be left to the early learning and education sector who have the children for a few hours a couple of times a week. Language development and literacy come from a child being read to at home on a regular basis – by a parent, a grandparent, an older sibling, any one.
We all know that libraries have two critical strengths in the EY sphere. One is the aforementioned capacity to engage young families and model good reading behaviours. However, the more significant one is that the libraries have the books. No school, no kindergarten, no early learning centre and no family can afford to buy and hold the number and spread of books needed to be read to a child on the 5 years from birth to the school gate. Libraries have the resources and they make them available for free. We just need to get them into the homes.
However, here is the next sobering statistic. In most Australian states and territories public library EY programs, as wonderful as they are, engage only around 3-5% of children aged between 0 and 5 years. And I’m fairly confident that most of the children at Story Time are not the ones who are likely to be headed for the ‘at risk’ or ‘developmentally vulnerable’ categories.
We need to encourage and facilitate more reading in the home and we need to find and reach out to the families of the children at risk.
Which is where the AEDC results from Queensland and WA become interesting. Both states had terrible results in the first couple of rounds of the AEDC, with more than 30% of children in the risk categories on language and cognitive development. Part of this was due to having proportionally higher percentages of children living in rural and remote areas and/or from First Nations families where AEDC results are at desperately poor (only 60% ‘on track’ … and that’s a whole another issue in itself).
From 2015, while still having high representation of these distinctive cohorts, Queensland and WA managed to get themselves back in line (or close to in line) with NSW and Victoria. At which point I could mention First 5 Forever (Qld) and Better Beginnings (WA) – statewide initiatives that provide funding and resources to support libraries take their EY collections and programs into the community. These two states have also seen their AEDC results go backwards from 2018 to 2024 but at least they are now in the same ballpark as the more populated states.
So, what’s my point? When it comes to children’s language and literacy skills …
We need (as a nation) to do better. We are setting up future generations for failure.
Public libraries have the books, and proven experience in facilitating reading in the home.
Libraries are doing great work, but it’s barely scratching the surface.
Libraries need Commonwealth and State government funding to support statewide delivery of EY programs to assist parents to read to their children and drive the AEDC results in a positive direction.
We need to work with our communities to say this cannot continue. We want change.
[This is not the first time I have blogged about libraries and early years literacy. Here’s an idea from 2020 that I still think has some merit. www.analibraryse.com/blog/what-if-libraries-could-change-the-world ]