International Statistical Literacy Project

Article Forbes, Sharleen. Raising Statistical Awareness In Teaching Statistics, Autumn 1996, Volume 18, Number 3, Pages 66 to 69. This article describes the organization and results of the 1990 New Zealand Children’s Census.

CensusAtSchool NZ aims to:

1. foster a positive attitude to statistics through using data that is both relevant and real
2. improve understanding of a data gathering process, its purposes and benefits to society
3. provide access to large and meaningful multivariate data sets
4. encourage effective IT teaching and learning
5. enhance the process of statistical enquiry across the curriculum

CensusAtSchool NZ involves an online children’s survey for school Years 5 through to 10. Schools take part voluntarily, with students completing the survey during lesson time, then submitting their data to contribute to an international database. Some questions are in common with the other countries, to provide comparisons between countries, while tailoring the remainder of the questionnaire to reflect the interests of New Zealand children. Results and sample data will be made available to teachers once the ‘census’ is complete, while classroom resources will be developed over time.

CensusAtSchool NZ is hosted by the Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland in association with Statistics New Zealand and the Ministry of Education.

Statistics New Zealand

Website for Schools (all parts are in English and some parts are also in te reo Mäori) This website, called Schools´ Corner, covers a wide range of learning programs. There are separate pages for primary and secondary level. The pages have parts for student use and parts for teacher use, including copies of newsletters called StatZing! (see below). There are also a variety of materials related to the 2001 Census in both English and te reo Mäori.

StatZing! is actually two Newsletters. One is for the primary level and one is for the secondary level. It is " distributed to every school in New Zealand three times a year. StatZing! is available in hard copy or electronic copy. The hard copy primary StatZing! is addressed to the teachers responsible for maths and social studies and the hard copy secondary StatZing! is addressed to the library with copies for the HODs [Heads of Department] of economics, geography, maths and social studies. StatZing! contains activities to use in the classroom with links to the curriculum.” (Quoted from website). The easiest way to access both the past and present issues of StatZing! is to go to http://www.stats.govt.nz/domino/external/web/schoolscorner.nsf/htmldocs/Schools+Corner . Then scroll down and click on either Primary StatZing! newsletter or Secondary StatZing! newsletter.

Although not being offered currently, Statistics New Zealand has offered a seminar “Statistics-the how, what, where, and why” for librarians working in public libraries and Census Seminars for the the wider community that provided background about the 2001 Census, how to look at the data, and a comparison over the last 100 years of the changing face of New Zealand. Currently offering “Census Information on the Web” to teach librarians and others how to access census information and make tables from the information.

For further information on all of the above contact Lesley Hooper, Education and Community Services, Statistics New Zealand, PO Box 2922, Wellington, New Zealand. email: lesley.hooper@stats.govt.nz. General website for Statistics New Zealand is http://www.stats.govt.nz.