CensusAtSchool Leads The Way!
In the May issue of the LEP Newsletter the CensusAtSchool project was introduced. It is a non compulsory free classroom resource aimed at improving statistical literacy and promoting Census for students in Years 5 to 12. More than 112 000 students answered interesting and non-invasive questions about themselves and then investigated the data collected on a voluntary basis. This response compares very favourably to CensusAtSchool in other countries.
Questionnaire response data has now been released back to teachers and students as random samples, providing real, relevant data that students can directly relate to for use across the curriculum in all states and territories. The Random Sampler opened on 11 July 2006 enabling students to obtain random samples (up to a sample size of 200) from the CensusAtSchool database. To date over 35 000 random samples have been downloaded.
As well as promoting statistical literacy and the Census, widespread use of the data will enhance the profile of the ABS in the schools sector and encourage more use of ABS statistics in the classroom. Now students have access to real and relevant data about themselves and their peers from across Australia, as well as the infrastructure and support services to analyse this data.
An international conference of countries conducting the CensusAtSchool project is planned to be held in Melbourne in March 2007. It is hoped that one of the outcomes of the conference will be an international standard set of questions leading to Australian schools having access to both local and international CensusAtSchool data for analysis and comparison purposes in future collections.
Visit the CensusAtSchool web page to find out more.