Right from birth, boys and girls don’t begin life on the same starting block and how this impacts their development through the early years, their adolescence and then adulthood is a question researchers are trying to understand.

A report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), Australia’s children, finds boys are more likely to be developmentally vulnerable on school entry than girls across all Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) domains, but particularly emotional maturity.

This means boys aren’t as prepared for school as their female peers.