ACT five-year-olds are suffering a chronic case of ''affluenza'' with middle-class children falling behind their less well-off classmates as well as the rest of the country on developmental milestones.
New local area results issued yesterday from the Federal Government's Australian Early Development Index show ACT children lagging behind NSW and Victoria on four of the five key childhood development milestones - social competence, emotional maturity, communication skills, and health and wellbeing.
But they also show that within the ACT, middle-class children - and not disadvantaged children - are at the highest level of developmental risk in these areas, most notably in health and wellbeing where the ACT ranks seventh in the nation after the Northern Territory.
The only milestone where ACT children outperform their state and territory classmates is in cognitive and language skills.
ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr said the results were surprising and the ACT was clearly bucking a national trend linking socio-economic disadvantage and developmental disadvantage.
For instance, in the well-heeled suburbs of Hawker, Campbell, Isaacs, Chapman, Oxley and Monash, five-year-olds were displaying higher levels of developmental risk than the rest of Canberra.
Conversely, suburbs with a high proportion of public housing and lower socio-economic status - including Richardson, Bonython, Duffy, Ainslie and Charnwood -contained children who were more accomplished in meeting milestones.
While he conceded Canberra parents may be alarmed by the findings from the index report, Mr Barr countered that they highlighted two important positives in the ACT.
''The first thing is this survey overwhelmingly suggests that our early intervention programs for disadvantaged children are having a real impact and that we appear to be breaking the link between disadvantage and poor development,'' he said. ''The second thing is that while Canberra children may be entering the school system from a position of relative vulnerability compared to the other states, by the time they graduate, they are more often than not leading the rest of the nation in outcomes. This is a testament to the quality of our school system.''
For a regional breakdown of the figures, see today's Canberra Times.
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