Numeracy in the early years

Our children are performing poorly in numeracy. The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) report card (ARACY, 2008) showed that Australian children came 8th out of 30 OECD countries in their levels of numeracy. Australian Indigenous children were 29th out of 30. Recent results from the Australian Early Development Index (CCCH & TICHR, 2009) show 8.9 per cent of Australian children are developmentally vulnerable in basic numeracy sills when starting school, meaning that they have significant difficulty with numbers, cannot count, recognise numbers, name shapes nor understand time concepts. These children are most likely to come from very remote areas (30%) and from disadvantaged communities (24%). More boys than girls have these problems (11.3% compared to 6.4%), as do Indigenous children (28.6%) compared to non-Indigenous children (7.9%). It is clearly important that we ensure young children are given a good grounding in numeracy to redress this level of disadvantage. Early childhood professionals need to understand how numeracy develops and how learning meets the outcomes identified in the 'Early Years Learning Framework' and the 'National Quality Standard' (Commonwealth of Australia, 2010).