Opportunities and challenges for statistics education in South Africa

Abstract

The South African educational system is in a state of transformation as the Government embarks on a process of grappling with legacies of the past, whilst balancing risks and opportunities for the future. Accordingly, a new school curriculum with outcomes-based education as the fundamental building block was introduced along a sliding scale, starting in 1997. This curriculum, with a vast statistics content, has the potential to change the face of statistics education in South Africa, as statistics had previously been virtually absent from the school syllabus. This article highlights the challenges to and opportunities for optimising the teaching of statistics across all education levels in South Africa.