Geography already has data skills sorted, thank you very much Mr Sunak!

Over the last few months Rishi Sunak has made it very clear what he thinks about maths in school. He has stated that he wants all pupils studying some sort of maths until the age of 18, and claims that poor numeracy and what he calls an 'anti-maths mindset' has damaged economic growth in the UK, which is a nice way of shifting the blame! Earlier today a review to tackle numeracy needed for future employment was announced (as reported by the BBC). But does Mr Sunak need to have a closer look at the curriculum beyond Maths lessons?

Mathematics and, in particular, statistical skills feature highly in a number of subjects across schools, both at GCSE and A-Level, including psychology, economic, business studies, and of course, geography!

In fact, mathematical skills questions make up 10% of marks on the AQA GCSE Geography papers. A further 30-40% of the final A-Level qualification is reserved for data skills. While statistical skills were left out of the Advanced Information last year, at A-Level, this is not the case, in 2023; and we could, realistically, see them examined in this year's papers.

As part of the GCSE course students need to be able to calculate measures of central tendency, including the mean, mode, median, quartiles and interquartile ranges, as well as understanding how to work out percentage increase and decrease. For the A-Level course, students need to be able to use inferential and relational statistical techniques including Spearman's rank correlation and Chi-squared test. And, of course, at both Key Stage 4 and 5 Geography students need to be able to collect, process, present and analyse geographical data - at GCSE, this forms a component of Paper 3, and at A-Level students complete a not insignificant independent investigation, predicated on analysis of primary and secondary data.

So, we can safely say that students studying geography will not be holding back UK economic growth with their shoddy numerical skills, they can leave that role to ... others.

How can we (the tutor2u team) help to support your students with their data skills?

We have free to download (and edit if needed) initial numeracy assessments both for GCSE and A-Level...

https://www.tutor2u.net/geogra...

https://www.tutor2u.net/geogra...

We have also recently updated our digital Grade Booster courses... the AQA GCSE digital Grade Booster course has a whole section on numeracy skills for students to work through - https://ondemand.tutor2u.net/s...

The AQA A-Level digital Grade Booster course also has a range of revision videos to guide students through different quantitative skills (see 'Revision Blast' section). We have just unlocked the Spearman's Rank video and the associated worksheet download for you to sample without having to pay to enrol on the course. Hopefully you will find it useful!

https://ondemand.tutor2u.net/s...

Remember that if any of your students attended the GCSE or A-Level Grade Booster cinema workshops, they automatically get an enrolment code for the digital Grade Booster course.