Girl students are more concerned about completing their homework than their male counterparts, according to a Survey.
The Survey, conducted by CensusAtSchool, an Educational Project, found that 74% of teenage girl respondents had completed their homework, outnumbering boys in the same age group (61%).
The Project accounts for 19,000 students from 600 schools.
For the first time this year, the questionnaire involved homework.
CensusAtSchool Coordinator Rachel Cunliffe said that the average time taken by students to complete their homework was 73 minutes.
“The numbers are just a snapshot, but they are food for thought in the lively debate around homework. It seems that everyone has an opinion on how much homework children should do and more recently, some education experts have suggested that children are perhaps better off playing after school rather than studying,” she said.
Favourite bands
On other matters, a majority of the students surveyed said that their favourite musical group was the English-Irish boy band ‘One Direction,’ which was formed after the 2010 season of ‘The X Factor’ in UK.
Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber and Beyonce were other favourites (in that order) among girls, while American singer and songwriter Bruno Mars, Eminem, Macklemore, Imagine Dragons and Coldplay were among the boys’ choices.
CensusAtSchool is a biennial online project that brings statistics to life in the classroom. Supervised by teachers, students aged between 10 and 18 (Year 5 to Year 13) answer 32 questions about their lives, many of them involving practical activities such as weighing and measuring, then become ‘data detectives’ as they analyse the results in class. This year, more than 1408 teachers have run CAS in their classrooms.
CensusAtSchool, now in its sixth edition, is a collaborative project involving teachers, the University of Auckland’s Department of Statistics, Statistics New Zealand and the Ministry of Education. It is part of an international effort to boost statistical capability among young people, conducted in Australia, UK, Canada, US, Japan and South Africa. The countries share some questions so that comparisons can be made, but a majority reflect New Zealand students’ interests.
University of Auckland Statistics Professor and Co-Director of the Project Chris Wild said that the Survey produces data about, from and for children, to enrich their learning about how to collect, explore and analyse data.
“But the project goes much further, by providing support to teachers,” he said.
Photo : 1. Rachel Cunliffe 2. Students at Pakuranga College, Auckland
