The lunches may be packed, the uniforms set out, books covered and labelled, but parents may be missing one essential on their child's return to school checklist.
As children head back for 2026, parents and carers are being encouraged to make sure their child's hearing has been checked.
This is especially important for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, who are at higher risk of starting their education at a disadvantage without regular hearing checks.
One in five First Nations children under six years old, have experienced undiagnosed hearing loss at some point in their life, data from Hearing Australia shows.
Eight per cent suffered persistent and chronic ear troubles.
"That's a lot of our First Nations kids and bubs," Hearing Australia's First Nations partnership specialist Kirralee Cross told AAP.
"If they're starting school and they have this hearing loss then it's going to impact on their ability to listen, to learn, to build connections and build really important skills when they start school."
Ms Cross, a Yorta Yorta woman, said getting children's ears checked early in life, and regularly is critical to make sure any hearing problems are picked up.
She said Hearing Australia recommends checks every six months until a child is four, but they can be performed more often if parents or carers have concerns.
"A lot of the time with these middle ear problems there's not symptoms," Ms Cross said.
"The parents, kids, families may not even know that there's anything wrong with their hearing.
"If it's not getting checked regularly, when they start school ... they are put at a disadvantage."
Hearing Australia recently launched an educator's guide called Spirit of Sound, designed to support the hearing health of Indigenous kids.
Data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, released in December, showed the proportion of Indigenous children who had long-term ear or hearing problems had halved since 2001.
These problems had been mainly caused by middle ear infections.
Ms Cross said it is heartening to see the downward trend over the past couple of decades but continued investment in programs like Hearing Australia's Early Ears, which has assessed more than 70,000 children since 2019, need to remain a priority.
"There's been a lot of work in this space, there's been a lot of support but we need to keep up the momentum," she said.
