Page 205 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS215 David Y. et al.
to raise attainment and achievement across learning. The Group published a
report in September 2016 containing ten recommendations [3].
Recommendation number 5 states that ‘Education Scotland should evaluate
the quality of children’s and young people’s learning in attainment in maths
and share examples of good practice.’ Around forty secondary, primary and
early learning and childcare settings are currently being inspected in response
to this recommendation and a final report is due to be published in August
2019. Recommendation number 8 focuses upon improving maths skills for
employment including understanding data and statistics.
Education in school forms the foundation for further education and
training. Employers have an unmet demand for people with strong literacy and
numeracy skills that can be applied in a variety of problem solving contexts,
and there is a substantial skills gap in data-driven industries. Work in the data
economy is strengthened by successful training in statistics and data analytics
combined with skills in critical thinking and the communication of findings.
Training and professional development for teachers will be a key ingredient
for success. In response to meeting these challenges, ‘Developing the Young
Workforce’ (DYW) is a seven year programme that aims to better prepare
children and young people for the world of work. Working with partners there
is now an expectation that all schools provide flexible pathways meeting the
needs of all learners and ensuring positive destinations for all young people.
The Higher Statistics Award has been designed to support the aims of this
programme by providing a stand-alone qualification at Higher level that can
be delivered by staff working in a variety of curricular areas, thereby offering
young people an alternative curricular pathway and providing skills for
learning, life and work.
The aim of teaching statistics at school level is to develop statistically
literate young adults who make reasonable assumptions when presented with
a set of data. Too often it is the case that while students develop adequate
procedural knowledge of how to compute descriptive statistics and construct
graphs, they are less able to reason about where and when to use these [4].
The RSS has stated ‘We would like to see basic numeracy and statistical literacy
included in teacher training and in continuing professional development (CPD)
for the whole profession’ [5]. They see this training of teachers from primary
school through to university lecturers as a key ingredient for success in
encouraging data literacy in young people. They further emphasise the need
to ensure that the training is focussed less on mathematical theory and more
on the application of practical skills to real-life situations. CPD training for
teachers should be applicable since management of data is a major part of
their working lives. [6, 7].
This paper describes the development of the Scottish Qualifications
Authority (SQA) Statistics Award in an effort to address these needs.

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