This newsletter highlights the latest curriculum related teaching resources, student activities and statistical tools that have been developed by ABS Education Services as well as other ABS resources that are useful for schools.

A word from the editor
CensusAtSchool News
An Idea for the Classroom: New Senior Years' Resources
Resources for Teachers: National Literacy and Numeracy Week
Interesting Publications
Farewell from Education Services

A word from the editor

Welcome to the Term 3 edition of Ed News!

The 2014 CensusAtSchool Questionnaire is now closed, with data available now in the Random Sampler. Thank you to all students and teachers who participated - you can check out some headline statistics in the 'CensusAtSchool News' section below.

In this edition of Education News, I have chosen to profile our new Senior Years' Resources webpage. As the title suggests, in this page contains a range of year 11 and 12 learning activities and resources. Find out more in 'An Idea for the Classroom.'

In the 'Resources for Teachers' section I have profiled the Australian Government initiative of National Literacy and Numeracy Week. Providing suggestions and inspiration for celebrating numeracy skills at school, home and the community, this website is a treasure trove of ideas.

For additional ABS data, statistics and resources, check out our 'Interesting Publications' section. These publications offer a gateway into a range of recently published ABS products that I have found particularly interesting this month.

This will be the last edition of Education News, so thank you for your support and readership. For more information, see the 'Farewell from Education Services' section below.

Emma Salik

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CensusAtSchool News

2014 Questionnaire closed - the results are in!

Here are some headline statistics from the 2014 data:

• NSW contributed the greatest number of questionnaires to this year's total - 4213 (or 26%).
• Consistent with previous years, most questionnaires were submitted by students from secondary schools (7843, 49%), followed by combined (4309, 27%) and primary and special schools (3922, 24%).

Do you need data? CensusAtSchool data from 2006-2014 is now available through the Random Sampler. If you'd like your students to be more hands on and find their own data, why not give it a try? The Sampler is a fantastic tool that makes it easy for students to produce data samples according to their own chosen research parameters.

For quick and easy data, our Interesting Statistics are a great entry point to CensusAtSchool data, providing a quick and easy analytical summary.

What about time series data? Complete CensusAtSchool data can be found in the National Summary Tables and National Time Series Tables. The tables show data results at the State/Territory level as well as Australia as a whole for the years 2006-2013 for a selection of topics from the questionnaire.

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An Idea for the Classroom: New Senior Years' Resources

Do your students need to know how to undertake univariate or bivariate analyses? Do you need some resources to help you teach time series analysis? If the answer to these questions is 'yes', then you are going to love our new 'Senior Years Resources' page on the Education Services website.

We've got a range of new lessons, using both CensusAtSchool and ABS data sources. Why not take some time now to explore some of our new products such as 'MAT19 - Association and Causation: Pirates and Global Warming' or 'CaSMa15 - Scatterplots: Correlation and fitting a trend line'.

All of these new resources are aligned to the senior years General Mathematics curricula for Units 2, 3 or 4.

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Resources for Teachers: National Literacy and Numeracy Week



This year marks the 16th National Literacy and Numeracy week (25-31 August). This year, the organisers of the event are encouraging the participation of parents, believing that positive parental engagement and involvement influences good outcomes for students' learning. Why not include a note about the week in your school newsletter?

The Australian Government's National Literacy and Numeracy Week (NLNW) website is a great tool for teachers, parents and students. The website has been developed to share a range of literacy and numeracy activities which can be undertaken within schools, at home and in the community.

Numeracy activity - 'Reach for the Stars'. This year's theme for the numeracy activity is water. Check out the 'Reach for the Stars' webpage for ideas on how you can collect information and data about water at your school.

Keep up to date with new activities and information. A free email newsletter is also available - you can sign up on the homepage but in the mean time, here's a link to the first newsletter for 2014!

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Interesting Publications

Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey: Updated Results, 2012-13 (cat. no. 4727.0.55.006)
This publication contains updated results for selected long term health conditions, health risk factors and socioeconomic characteristics. Data are available for download through a suite of Excel data cubes.

Australian Demographic Statistics, Dec 2012 (cat. no. 3101.0)
This publication explores trends in population growth across the states and territories. The product for this quarter includes a Demography video, as well as the standard suite of detailed time series spreadsheets in Excel format.

Caring in the Community, Australia, 2012 (cat. no. 4436.0)
This publication provides a range of data gathered from the 2012 Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers. Summary findings on the characteristics of carers, co-resident carers and primary carers are available. Data can also be downloaded in an Excel data cube.

Recorded Crime - Victims, Australia, 2013 (cat. no. 4510.0)
This publication delivers information about victims of crime for Australia and the states and territories, including specific data on victims of assault by state and territory. Extensive commentary is provided, as well as suite of Excel data cubes containing detailed tabular data.

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Farewell from Education Services

Regretfully, Education Services is among the list of statistical activities that will be discontinued from the ABS forward work program from July 2014 (see media release). This includes the publication of Education News - as such, this will be our last edition. But all the newsletters already published will remain available for you to revisit at any time.

CensusAtSchool and Education Services have a proud legacy. The support of CensusAtSchool within the Australian education community, and the partnerships Education Services has enjoyed with our many stakeholders and clients, have added significantly to the field of enhancing statistical literacy. We would like to express our appreciation for your valuable input into the success of CensusAtSchool and your support of Education Services products and initiatives.