EVERY prep child would be tested for their attention and concentration abilities under a plan by Melbourne researchers to give them the best start at school.

Researchers at Monash University’s school of psychological sciences have developed and successfully tested a game that helps children improve their ability to focus on a task, be organised and learn.

Lead researcher Kim Cornish said 40,000 prep pupils started each year with reduced attention, which is a fundamental skill for learning.

“If you have minimal attention, you struggle to learn to read and make decisions, have trouble with relationships and it can lead to mental health problems,” Prof Cornish said.

“It’s important we help kids start school in a position that facilitates good learning.”

After successful trials of the TALI Health program — based on 20 years of research by Prof Cornish and developed with Torus Games — the game is now being used by doctors and schools across the country for children with severe attention difficulties such as Down syndrome, autism and ADHD.

Children use the program for 20 minutes a day, five days a week for five weeks.

The games build skills such as sustaining concentration, reducing impulsivity and filtering information.

Co-inventor of TALI, Dr Hannah Kirk, said they had just received $1.2 million in federal funding to develop the program into a screening tool for typically developing children to measure attention capacity upon school admission.

“There are still a lot of children unaware they have attention difficulties, but if we can detect them sooner, the evidence shows that cognitive training is most effective in the early years because of plasticity in the developing brain,” Dr Kirk said.

TALI is a key research project at the new Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Australia’s first dedicated institute for mental health.

Hunter, 3, is one of the first children to try the app in this next stage of development. Like many his age, he struggles to sit still through breakfast or when getting dressed.

Mum Catherine Gibson hopes Hunter can build his concentration skills to sit and take part in story time when he starts kinder next year.

“Normally, he’ll just flick the pages and he doesn’t listen to the story, but he’s starting to ask for books in the evening. That’s definitely been an improvement since using TALI,” she said.

Researchers are now recruiting 300 Melbourne children aged 3-6 as part of the validation trial for TALI.