2903.0.55.002 - How Australia Takes a Census, 2006  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 03/08/2006  First Issue
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MEDIA RELEASE

July 28, 2006
Embargoed: 11:30 AM (AEST)
QLD20/2006
Queensland CENSUSatSCHOOL Data Released

Students from over 400 Queensland schools have recently completed the questionnaire stage of the CensusAtSchool project.

CensusAtSchool is an online learning experience conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). It shows students from Years 5 to 12 how statistics can be relevant to them.

The Queensland Director of Census, Mr Tony Webb, said the ABS was delighted with the response from both the public and independent schools sectors.

“Just like a real Census, students answered a set of questions about themselves. The questions dealt with things such as height, if they are right or left handed, and the colour of their eyes,” Mr Webb said.

Students can access the data to make comparisons between themselves and other sets of students in different parts of Australia and as with the national Census, no one can be identified from this data and strict internet security is in place.

In Queensland 415 schools participated and 13,964 responded.
In an exercise mirroring the Census of Population and Housing to be held on Tuesday August 8, 110,000 Australian school students have participated in completing the CensusAtSchool questionnaire covering topics that that are of interest to them. A sample of Queensland school students reveals that:

83% were right handed
35% were brown eyed and 29% were blue eyed
Average height was 157 cm
75% had access to a mobile phone
58% had cereal for breakfast
52% nominated pizza as their favourite take away food
67% were driven to school
88% had internet access at home
87% had pets of which the most popular were dogs (64%) and cats (34%)