Education Vision and Strategy

The Society has always been concerned to promote statistical education. Through the Education column in RSS NEWS, our members' monthly newsletter, and via the RSS Centre for Statistical Education's newslinks, the Society aims to keep all those interested in the teaching and learning of statistics in touch with policy and curriculum developments.

Our vision is that 'statistical literacy' should be seen within society as being a vital life skill.

Numbers are everywhere and understanding how data are used is key to understanding the world around us and the society we live in, and to developing a strong economy. All school leavers should be able to use and interpret data effectively in the workplace. They should also have the ability to use data to make evidence-informed judgements, choices and decisions for themselves in their lives more generally.

Statistics is an important area of study within mathematics, and an important tool within a wide range of subjects across the sciences and social sciences, from biology, medicine and engineering, through to the environmental sciences, geography, psychology and sociology.

Our strategy aims to build strong - real data, real application-inspired - statistics teaching and learning across the curriculum, in all phases of education, particularly at secondary level.  Teaching and learning statistics via examples of how statistics are used in the real world both enlivens the statistics classroom and ensures a meaningful experience of the subject for both students and teachers.

In the next 2 years, our primary aim is to expand the corps of confident and skilled teachers of statistics and statistical skills across a range of subjects and so build a generation of statistically literate school leavers with the statistical life skills they need, the skill set employers need and the skills needed to embark on further study of statistics and other subjects in which statistics are taught and used.

Our education projects will include platforms which can help us to reach out to wider public audiences such as parents and citizens.