The ‘Statistics and Modelling’ subject at Year 13 does not of course contain only Statistics, but it is the first formal impression that the school students have of our discipline. These are the students that may take a first year Statistics paper at university (a number of them under compulsion) and they are essentially the pool from which the future New Zealand graduates in Statistics will be formed.

The school Statistics curriculum in its various guises has had considerable input from NZSA members in the past. There has been growing concern over recent years that the material the students are expected to cover is still not sufficiently ‘data led’ and instead focuses on formal mathematical manipulations, rather than on an understanding of the underlying concepts.

The current Statistics Scholarship sample examination does not allay concerns about such formal manipulations. For example, one question requires students to calculate regression coefficients from a set of numbers, which is certainly not a skill requiring understanding of meaning, and a rather time consuming exercise for an examination anyway.

The central problem with implementation seems to be in three parts. Firstly, it is far easier to examine formalities than to test understanding. Secondly, the new curriculum has been put in place without providing teachers with much of the basic material (eg data sets) that will be necessary for them to teach and assess. This would not be so much a problem if teachers of Statistics in schools all had a wealth of material collected from experience as practising statisticians themselves, but in general they do not. Thirdly, limited access to hardware and software makes it very difficult for some teachers and students to take a ‘data led’ approach.

With insufficient Ministry of Education funding available yet for resources, it is this second part of the problem that the Education Subcommittee’s weekend efforts will begin to address. The efforts will aim to construct data-based assessment tasks for the new Year 13 standard. You could make a very practical contribution by sending datasets (either before or after the resource weekend) to Lesley Hooper, the Education Committee Secretary. Further detail is elsewhere in this newsletter.

There is also a deeper question about curriculum content or emphasis, and here my views are more personal ones. As a statistician who regularly acts as a Statistical Consultant, you might surmise that I would be completely in favour of a ‘data led’ approach to Statistics. However I am not, or, at least, not entirely so. Many practical problems I encounter require theoretical solutions, and theoretical solutions generally require sound mathematics. I really see these two parts as complementary, and both as being necessary. And just to be quite clear, by mathematics I do not mean formal manipulations without understanding. I mean that Statistics curricula need to give students all the tools necessary to take apart a statistical problem set at the appropriate level, and to put together a sound answer.

I believe we need to make this clear even at NCEA Level 3. Otherwise we risk losing the better students because there is not sufficient mathematics provided, or complexity of data sets permitted, to support a deeper understanding. For example, when considering the relationship between variables, the new content at Year 13 requires only analysis of bivariate continuous data. ‘Data led’ Statistics is, at best, not so constrained, nor simply words about pictures, or even pictures about data. A wider perspective is needed.

Why are these issues important to us in the Statistics profession? Well, there is certainly a societal requirement for more statisticians. Given this, I think we need to ask ourselves why so few of the students who study Year 13 Statistics end up graduating in the subject, and, more importantly, what we as an Association can do to help change this situation. Although they are, of course, not the only ones involved, the Education Committee’s weekend commitment is a very welcome step in this direction.