STATISTICS IN EDUCATION

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 13:23:58 +0000

By Eustarckio Kazonga

Introduction

My previous article in The World of Statistics column focused on the uses of statistics in agriculture. Agriculture was used in the context of crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry.

This article focuses on the use of statistics in education. It illustrates how statistics is used in many aspects of education. Education has many definitions but for the purpose of this article, education is defined as the act or process of imparting or acquiring knowledge and skills, development of rational reasoning and judgment. There are many factors that play a role in education. For example, pupils/students, teachers/lecturers, infrastructure for learning, learning materials, financing, etc.

Statistics need to be analysed and appropriately portrayed effectively for the people to understand. The challenge that is often faced is to be able to use statistics and to translate them into real life, decision-making applications in education. This requires statistical literacy as Waterhouse (2002) states that “all graduates should be ‘good consumers of quantitative information’…they ought to be able to understand statistics and read a report that contains statistical analysis. They ought to be familiar with the logic that goes along with quantitative analysis even though they may never be mathematicians or statisticians.”

Uses of Statistics in

Education

There are multiple uses of statistics in education. I will not be able to cover all of them but will try to highlight some of the uses to demonstrate how statistics is or can be used in education. It is necessary that those involved in the provision of education at various levels have some of the statistical skills and reasoning necessary to interpret and use that information about institutions of learning [schools, colleges and universities], teachers/lecturers, and pupils/students to improve the education system. Statistics such as achievement trends over time, or comparison data for provinces and comparable systems can help them develop ways to improve student learning. There is need for the educators to have sufficient understanding of statistics to make use of them in the prevention of errors in decision-making.

Examination Results Analysis

Analysis of examination results requires use of statistics. For example, the Honourable Minister of Education officially released the 2016 Grade 12 results in January 2017 and it was reported that “54 schools scored a hundred percent pass rate. 2016 recorded an increased proportion of pupils obtaining school certificates with a 4.9% shoot up from 2015. The percent of boys who obtained full certificates was higher than that of girls pegged at 63.95 and 59.57 percent respectively. Eastern Province recorded the highest proportion of candidates obtaining school certificates followed by Southern Province while Western and Copperbelt recorded the lowest. The results indicate that grant aided schools topped the performance list followed by private and public schools”. It is clear that in this examination results announcement, statistics were used to compare performance of pupils between 2015 and 2016, boys and girls, provincial performance, ownership of schools versus performance. Eastern Province was reported as having the highest proportion of school certificates, which implies that the statistical concepts of proportion and ranking were used. The use of proportion was to standardise the results in order to enable comparison since the number of pupils differed from one province to the other.

Let me further elaborate on the use of statistics in analysing examinations. According to the Examinations Council of Zambia in conjunction with UNICEF Zambia (2013) study report on Learner Absenteeism from Public Examinations at the Primary and Junior Secondary School, “…..there were a number of findings that used statistics and some of these were as follows: (a) The average rates of absenteeism were 9.04 percent and 11 percent at Grades 7 and 9 respectively. (b) At Grade 7 level, the absenteeism rates were higher for girls than boys. For example, 10.12 percent of the girls were absent compared to 9.48 percent boys in the 2012 examination session; 13.64 percent of the girls were absent compared to 11.95 percent boys in 2011; and 11.76 percent of the girls were absent compared to 11.14 percent boys in 2010. (c) The pattern of having more girls being absent from public examinations was found both at Grade 7 and 9 level. (d) In terms of provincial absenteeism, Western (14.35%) and Northern (13.24%) Provinces recorded the highest rates while Copperbelt (7.26%), Southern (7.68%) and Lusaka (7.98%) Provinces had the lowest rates. Lusaka (11.34%) and Copperbelt (11.62%) Provinces recorded the lowest rates of absenteeism at Grade 9 level while Western (23.65%) and Central (21.19%) were the provinces with the highest absenteeism rates….”

These statistics help in understanding the extent and distribution of the problem of absenteeism from public examinations at Grades 7 and 9 Levels so that appropriate decisions can be made to solve the problem.

Student : teacher/lecturer ratio

Pupil/student:teacher/lecturer ratio expresses a relationship between the number of students enrolled in a course/subject, school, college, or university. For example, a course/subject with a student:teacher ratio of 30:1 indicates that there are 30 pupils/students for every one   teacher/lecturer. Class size and student:teacher/lecturer ratios are much-discussed aspects of quality of education provision and, along with pupils’/students’ learning time. Smaller classes are often seen as beneficial because they allow teachers/lecturers to focus more on the needs of individual pupils/students.

Teachers’/lecturers’ Records

Teachers/lecturers use statistics in keeping attendance registers, performance assessment results [assignments/homework, tests, and examinations]. Statistics can be helpful to teachers and lecturers in any number of situations as they make it possible to analyse sets of data and come to informed conclusions about that data.

The benefits of statistics that are gathered by teachers and lecturers in classrooms can have great effects on education institutions and can provide a lot of improvements that will probably have been overlooked. If these statistics are looked at and analysed in the proper way then people will have the power to improve in the weak areas. If this goes on every year, the quality of education will continue to improve every year.

The most important reason why teachers/lecturers using statistics is that they are able to monitor students’ progress throughout the school term, semester, or year. Statistics can also be used by education institutions in general to assess how good the students are doing in particular subject or course of study. It can also show where there is possible room for improvement and by analysing this data; these improvements can be implemented as quickly as possible.

Education Attainment and School Attendance Ratios

Statistics are used in the calculation of education attainment school attendance ratios. In the Zambia Demographic and Health Survey, educational attainment is one of the variables considered in the background characteristics since it is believed that it is one of the most influential factors affecting people’s knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours in various aspects of life. The education attainment is split into female and male for comparison.

In the same survey, School Attendance Ratios are computed. Specifically, Net Attendance Ratio (NAR) and Gross Attendance Ratio (GAR) are calculated. NAR indicates participation in primary schooling for the population age 7-13 and secondary schooling for the population age 14-18. The Gross Attendance Ratio (GAR) measures participation at each level of schooling among those of any age from 5 to 24 years.

Pupil/Student and  Teacher/Lecturer Attrition

Student attrition is the number of students who leave a programme of study before it is finished. Teacher attrition is the number of teachers/lecturers who do not continue with their work. Teachers/lecturers are being lost due to a number of reasons such as being assigned to non-teaching jobs, expiry of contract, resignation, dismissal, retirement and death. Statistics are very important in education in the policy formulation for decision-makers.

Policy Planning, Motoring and Evaluation

The education sector faces a number of challenges in terms of policy planning, monitoring and evaluation. The partial solution to this problem lies in the use of statistics as they often provide some of the only objective information that education administrators and managers may use when making organisational and curricula decisions. Without statistics in place, often nothing separates the merits of the various arguments that people on different sides of policy decisions make supporting their own cases.

Statistics is playing an increasingly significant role in many of our endeavours in education.  Be it the Government, investors, social organisations or members of the general public, they all make heavy use of statistical methodology and data in policy/strategy formulation, daily decision making and socio-economic studies. Not having any statistical skills at all, a person stands to lose out whether in work or in daily living.  However, statistics have to be applied properly.  Otherwise, not only are the benefits not reaped, wrong conclusions could be drawn and wrong directions shown, hence harm is caused.  It is therefore essential for every citizen to possess an adequate understanding of statistical concepts and methodologies and commonly available statistical data.  This is also a natural task for them too since it is in their own interest to ensure that the statistical data they produce are widely and properly used.

Raising the level of statistical literacy

Statistics is playing an ever more important role in day-to-day work in the education sector, and is being used in public debate on education issues.  It has to be acknowledged that, in some societies, the stage has not yet been reached that statistics is generally respected, trusted, understood and applied.  There are some people who still have little or no idea whatsoever of what statistics is, or who are suspicious of the truthfulness of released statistics as they have no skills to judge, or who view statistics as too complicated and absolutely impossible for them to handle.  Raising statistical literacy of the community will address such problems.

Teacher/lecturer Knowledge about Statistics

It would be incomplete for me not to deal with the issue of the teachers’ or lecturers’ statistics knowledge. Teacher/lecturer education in statistics may follow many routes. It may depend, for example, on the perspective that is assumed for teaching statistics. It may make a difference when such teaching is centred in: (a) mastering concepts and procedures, computing statistics measures and representing data in routine exercises; (b) data handling, collecting, representing and interpreting readymade data provided by the teacher/lecturer; or (c) doing statistical investigations, which involve a full cycle of posing questions, collecting, analysing, interpreting, and critiquing data and arguments.

Statistical Literacy in Education

It is commonly accepted that the goal of promoting education statistical literacy is to orientate individuals in terms of: possessing basic understanding in statistical concepts and methods; being able to identify quality statistics from the pool of accessible statistical data for education; understanding statistical constructs such as quality of education indicators; making proper use of relevant statistical data to understand facts and phenomena; and analysing issues, making decisions and planning future actions with statistics. In essence, the promotion of statistical literacy deals with the issues of how to equip people to turn statistical data into information and knowledge and to apply statistics in education.

Conclusion

In this article I have profiled some of the uses of statistics in education.  It has been shown that statistics is used by teachers/lecturers and education managers and administrators in a variety of ways in education. As such, it is clear that statistical literacy is required in understanding statistics in education. Readers, join me again next week as my next article in The World of Statistics will focus on the use of statistics in church [chu-statistics].