1330.0 - Education News, February 2014  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 19/02/2014   
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CensusAtSchool News


The 2014 CensusAtSchool Questionnaire is now open! The questionnaire opened on 17 February and will close on 1 August.

Last year 23,745 students input their data. We encourage teachers to get their students to participate in the 2014 Questionnaire so that they too can be a part of this national community. By adding their data, students are contributing to an exceptional and unique databank which is accessible to students and teachers for free.

What is CensusAtSchool? CensusAtSchool is a nation-wide project that runs annually. The questionnaire is open in terms 1 and 2 every year. Students complete an online questionnaire of 31 questions such as their height, what they had for breakfast and their opinions on environmental and social issues. The questionnaire is designed to collect different types of data such as categorical and numerical. The data is collected in a confidential manner to ensure individual students cannot be identified. For more information you can visit the CensusAtSchool - Australia website.

How can I get involved? Completing the questionnaire is quick and easy. Just follow these three steps:

1. Create a teacher account
2. Access your teacher account to generate student access numbers (SAN)
3. Get your students to complete the Questionnaire. This usually takes around 20 minutes.

What next? Once the questionnaire closes, the data for 2014 will be available through the Random Sampler. The data is free to access and your students do not have to complete the questionnaire to access the data. Data for 2006 to 2013 is available for you to explore right now through the Random Sampler.

In case you needed another reason to participate... Completing the questionnaire, and then accessing the data, is an exciting way to teach students about statistics and how a survey is conducted. The data is relevant to students and can be used in a number of ways. Students can even access and compare data from the other countries involved in CensusAtSchool around the world! There are nine countries with rich data just waiting to be explored on the International Random Data Selector.

Participating in the CensusAtSchool questionnaire is also an easy way to satisfy some of the General Capabilities outlined in the Australian Curriculum. Education Services provides a library of lessons on our website that teachers can access and use for free.