The challenge of statistical capacity building in South Africa is enormous, but can only be achieved through small, consistent and collaborative steps. One of these steps was taken last weekend, with the first activity in the "maths4stats" campaign.
One lingering result of the apartheid era is that few South Africans have the statistical skills required in the modern world.
On September 17 1953, the minister of native affairs, HF Verwoerd, asked parliament: What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?
This statement prefigured the introduction of the system of Bantu education in 1954, consciously de-emphasising the teaching of mathematics and science. A generation of South African scientists, mathematicians and statisticians was destroyed.
Dismantling a legacy such as this is not an easy task. The 6th International Conference on the Teaching of Statistics (Icots-6), held in Cape Town in July 2002, started the process by reaching out to local mathematics school teachers.
This initiative recognised the cross-curricular need for data handling as an educational outcome, and resulted in vast amounts of statistical material being included throughout the various phases of the new school curriculum. The Association of Mathematics Educators of SA (Amesa) became involved in Icots-6, and a number of teachers and subject advisers were able to participate in locally organised workshops.
This led to further workshops on the teaching of statistics at schools, held under the auspices of Amesa, with members of the SA Statistics Association (Sasa) contributing by commenting on the proposed new statistical components of the mathematics syllabus.
Extending this collaboration with Sasa and Amesa, Statistics SA has embarked on a series of activities to enhance statistical development. The maths4stats campaign is the first of these activities, and aims to encourage the development of mathematics education as an important bedrock for statistics.
The campaign will involve the development of training material to strengthen the statistics component of teaching in grade 10 to grade 12. The first activity in the campaign, held on Saturday, May 13, targeted maths teachers for these grades and over 2 000 sat for a selection test countrywide. Eighteen teachers will be chosen from this group to attend the 7th International Conference on the Teaching of Statistics (Icots-7) in Brazil in July 2006.
These teachers will also form part of the core working group at provincial levels in rolling out the campaign activities for the next three years.
The maths4stats campaign has been conceived as a juncture where mathematics, statistics, teaching and history intersect and interact to address statistical development in South Africa. The campaign will assist in developing a culture of "maths4stats education". This aims at producing a cadre of statisticians for a democratic social order, promoting a statistically literate society and ultimately facilitating the compilation of better statistics for better results.