Empowering FE students to embrace the power of data

The Office for National Statistics recently launched a programme of communication to engage the public on ONS statistics and tools, and to increase awareness of how they collect and process data to produce statistics. Their research showed that under 24s had especially low awareness of ONS, so they wanted to launch brand new education resources designed to help students in England and Wales aged 16 to 18 learn about the power of data and its importance for society. Working closely with ONS in-house data experts, the Association of Colleges, and educators from the Hopscotch Educator Network we developed a suite of project toolkits featuring activities that educators can easily embed into their math, business, sociology, and geography teaching.

Covering topics such as inflation, the gender pay gap, and health and wellbeing, each toolkit is aligned to college and sixth form exam board requirements and challenges students to test their own hypotheses as real data experts would, using ONS datasets and tools.

We’ll be driving awareness of the launch of the resources in both English and Welsh through a supporting email marketing campaign to FE colleges and sixth forms across England and Wales.