Child health experts are concerned by a significant increase in the number of Australian children requiring learning support at school.
Latest figures from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) reveal that one in four students, or 24.2 per cent of all primary and high school enrolments, now need learning assistance – up from 22.5 per cent in 2022 and 18 per cent in 2015.
The Kids Research Institute Australia Executive Director, Professor Jonathan Carapetis, said that worryingly, a number of other key indicators of child health and wellbeing remain in decline or are failing to improve.
“These data add further evidence as to why we need to be more proactive in addressing serious issues affecting our nation’s most precious resource, our children,” he said.
“For some time now we have known that the mental and physical health of our children is at risk with increasing rates of anxiety, depression and obesity. Up to half of mental disorders have their onset by age 14, one in five kids still doesn’t finish school, one in six lives below the poverty line and our teenagers are spending 30 per cent of their time while awake on screens.
As child health researchers we are asking the hard questions to find out why this happening, what we can all do to turn around these figures and ensure that all kids can reach their full potential.
The ACARA data reveal that last year, of the students requiring educational adjustment due to disability, more than 54 per cent had cognitive disabilities.
A third of students needed learning assistance because they had a social-emotional disability, nearly 10 per cent a physical disability, and 2.7 per cent a sensory disability.
Professor Carapetis said researchers at The Kids, formerly The Kids Research Institute Australia, would continue to focus on developing new solutions with service providers and governments aimed at optimising children’s development from as early as possible in a child’s life.
“When kids are struggling – when they cannot concentrate, when they cannot see or hear as well as other children, when they’re dealing with a chronic condition or disability, when they cannot move as easily as other children, when they are neurodivergent, when their family don’t have the resources to feed them in the morning, when they’ve experienced trauma, or when they don’t have equitable access to healthcare or other support – it not only affects their ability to learn, but to develop and thrive.”
Andrew Whitehouse, the Angela Wright Bennett Professor of Autism Research and Director of CliniKids at The Kids, is an international leader in developing ways to better support children with disability in schools. He was recently appointed by WA Education Minister, Tony Buti, to lead an expert panel to review the WA School Education Act to identify opportunities to strength the access and inclusion for children with disability.
“We know that there are increasing numbers of children experiencing developmental challenge, and these numbers show that the challenges endure all the way through to the school years,” Professor Whitehouse said.
“There is an urgent need to find new ways to support children, and also to support those who are closest to children – parents and teachers. The importance of research and evidence in this endeavour cannot be underestimated. Evidence provides the path towards our ‘north star’ of ensuring that all children reach their full potential.”