Early child development
Scotland 2024 to 2025

About this release

This annual release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides an update on children’s development as assessed during the 13-15 month, 27-30 month, and 4-5 year child health reviews. The latest information presented comes from reviews provided to children becoming eligible for review between April 2024 and March 2025.

Main points

• In 2024/25, 14% of children who received a 13-15 month review, 17% of those at 27-30 month review, and 19% of those at 4-5 year review had a concern noted about at least one area of their development.
• These findings represent a stabilising in the percentage of children with a concern noted about at least one area of development at the 13-15 month and 27-30 month reviews but a slight increase at 4-5 year review (18% in 2023/24).

Line chart showing trend in developmental concerns at the 13-15 month, 27-30 month and 4-5 year reviews

Close

Percentage with a developmental concern recorded by stage of review

• The most frequently recorded developmental concerns were gross motor development¹ at 13-15 months (8%), speech, language & communication at 27-30 months (12%), and emotional/behavioural development at 4-5 years (11%).
• There are marked and persistent socioeconomic inequalities in the percentage of children recorded as having a concern about their development at each review, with the highest percentages seen among children living in the most deprived areas. The gap between those living in the most and least deprived areas is greatest at the 27-30 month review (15 percentage points) and smallest at the 13-15 month review (5 percentage points).

1. Gross motor development is the process by which children gain control over large muscle movements needed for actions like crawling, walking, running, and jumping.

Background

Early child development is influenced by both biological factors (such as being born premature) and environmental factors (such as the parenting and opportunities for play and exploration children receive). Problems with early child development are important as they are strongly associated with long-term health, educational, and wider social difficulties.

Detecting developmental problems early provides the best opportunity to support children and families to improve outcomes. There is good evidence that parenting support and enriched early learning opportunities can improve outcomes for children with, or at risk of, developmental delay. There is also increasing evidence that intensive early interventions for children with serious developmental problems can also improve outcomes.

All children in Scotland are offered the child health programme which includes a series of child health reviews, including an assessment of children’s development at 13-15 months, 27-30 months and 4-5 years. These reviews involve asking parents about their child’s progress, carefully observing the child, and supporting parents to complete a structured questionnaire about the child’s development. At the end of the review Health Visitors record whether they have any concerns about each area of the child’s development.

Information for parents on early child development, and promoting good development, is available through Ready Steady Baby, Ready Steady Toddler, and Parent Club.​

Further information

Contextual information on the coverage of child health reviews is provided in the PreSchool Review Coverage Statistics.

The next release of this publication will be April 2027.