CensusAtSchool brings statistics to life

Students get out the measuring tape in a past CensusAtSchool.

The Ministry of Education is once more joining with Statistics New Zealand, and the University of Auckland’s Department of Statistics, to help deliver the online CensusAtSchool(external link) project – which aims to teach students how to gather data and to increase their statistical literacy.

More than 775 schools and 1,509 teachers are already registered to take part in the census, which is held every two years.

This year students from Years 5–13 will be asked for their opinions on climate change, along with questions about how they get to school, whether their lunches contain litter, the weights of their backpacks, and the number of social media accounts they are signed up to.

Ministry Associate Deputy Secretary Pauline Cleaver says, “This 30-question survey brings statistics to life in both English medium and Māori medium classrooms – with teachers and students getting out tape measures and scales to calculate the data needed to answer some of the questions.

“This census, known in te reo Māori as TataurangaKiTeKura Aotearoa, is held every second year,” she says. “It ensures that relevant, real-life data is collated to help students learn more about themselves and their peers.

“Classes can then mine the results from 2019 and other survey years for their ongoing studies – for example there were 120,000 unique visitors to the CensusAtSchool website(external link) over the 2016-17 period.”

This is the ninth time the international project has been run in New Zealand, with more than 32,000 students, 1,062 teachers and 534 schools taking part in the 2017 survey.

To take part in the 2019 census, teachers can sign up their classes(external link).