Statistical Literacy Initatives Inventory

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Purpose: Statbel Junior is a tool designed by Statbel, the Belgian statistical office to introduce children and young people (8 years and up) and their teachers to the world of official statistics. As Belgian statistical office, Statbel collects, produces and disseminates a great deal of information on Belgian society, often down to the level of the municipality. At the same time, our mission is to make these figures easier to understand, also among children and young people. Statbel Junior was developed based on the feedback we received from teachers and students. Not all figures are equally clear for children. Therefore, five broad topics cover as wide a range as possible of subjects closely linked to the living environment of children and young people. They can find out more about a large amount of public statistics of their own municipality in the current 5 topics (population, population evolution, nationalities, traffic accidents and agriculture) and how those statistics are calculated. These are figures that Statbel produces and publishes, which are accessible to everyone. And for children and young people, Statbel has made them just a little bit more accessible on this website by displaying all figures at municipality level. At the beginning of each topic, there is the possibility to customise your experience. Some data are requested: the municipality and the age. Based on this data, the charts in the section are generated. Children in the 5th and 6th year of primary school and 1st and 2nd year of secondary school should be able to work with the tool without any problem, both in terms of content and how the site works. Of course, teachers can also guide their students in using this tool. They can use parts of it in their lessons, specifically to cover certain topics, or to look at the situation in your municipality in figures. The tool is designed to be used in a class. The goal is not to let children work on it on their own, without an adult around who can give explanations if necessary. However, it can be used for children to learn the subjects by themselves, as far as they have the opportunity to ask for additional explanations. Throughout the topics, students are introduced to various ways of representing data, and to different statistical concepts. If a particular basic concept is covered, the student can click and open the toolbox to learn more about that concept. Throughout this website, children and young people can collect Statistimals. They are fun data figures you that can be earned by reading themes or taking a quiz. If the teacher provided students with a login, the students can save these Statistimals in their personal profile. The website fulfils the minimum accessibility requirements and can also be accessed via mobile devices.

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Target Audience:

• School children/ teachers
• General public
• Teachers in training

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Providing Entity:

• National Statistical Office

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Language:

• English
• French
• Dutch, German

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Products:

• Websites

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Mode of implementation: Present key figures per municipality to children: population, diversity, housing, traffic accidents and agriculture. One page at a time, children are being explained some statistical principle, and need to answer some questions (as a quiz) afterwards to check whether they understood correctly.

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Outcomes: We had very good user feedback. Moreover, we have been invited in classroom throughout Belgium since the launch in 2018. The website was completely transformed early 2024 to comply with modern standards.

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Challenges: There are opportunities to enhance the content and user experience, like the portal for teachers. There are opportunities to widen to scope, like more themes.

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