Discuss the importance of statistical literacy in your profession and be sure to include in your

discussion the application of the two general classes of statistical techniques: descriptive
statistics and inferential statistics in conducting research in your field of interest.

It is now an unquestioned and accepted fact of life that we live in a world dominated by
science and technology and that this inevitably requires a workforce and members of society in
general to be more scientifically literate and numerate. Employees are required to possess
higher levels of the basic skills of literacy, numeracy and a greater capability in the use of
information technology. This is coupled with the wider skills for employability namely: team
working, problem solving and managing their own learning and development. People leaving
education to enter employment require these skills to equip them for the modern work place.

In the teaching profession, statistics is important because it helps a teacher know when
teaching has effectively been done. They can use them to determine if the class understands
the material or if they need to cover more of it through administration assignments/homework,
tests and examinations. Statistics are important to teachers for several reasons, and not just for
the obvious one of checking on students and their progress in school. These reasons could
include: ensuring the quality of education is being kept high; monitor student’s progress; monitor
the teacher’s progress or success; and check the effectiveness of a subject. Statistics are
produced for the size of school or college; number of pupils or students enrolled by gender;
composition of teachers by gender, age or qualification; Work load; Number of classes or
periods taught per week; Trend analysis – enrolment, pass rates etc.

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 (In this case schools, and colleges), 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.

The quality of education is heavily dependent on the performance of teachers. It is for

this reason that the school aims at ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and
promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Teachers can play a very important role in
monitoring progress made towards achieving the goal but specifically with reference to a range
of indicators. The first and possible the most important reason why teachers use statistics is so
that they are able to monitor pupils’/students’ progress throughout the term, semester or year.
By giving pupils/students homework/assignments, tests and end of term/semester/year
examinations, teachers are able to keep track of pupils’/students’ performance.

A teacher plays so many roles and one of these is guidance and counselling. This is a
skill that every teacher must have as they are always involved in guiding and counselling
pupils/students. There is a positive correlation between guidance and counselling and career
decision-making. Effective guidance and counselling have a positive influence on students’
career decision-making. In order for this to happen, use of statistics is necessary.

Encouraging regular school attendance is one of the most powerful ways of preparing
children for success both in school and in life. When you make school attendance a priority, you
help your children get better grades, develop good life habits, and have a better chance of
graduating from school/college. When students are absent for some days, their grades and
numeracy and reading skills may be affected. Every teacher keeps a record of class attendance
of his pupils/students. The attendance records are then analyzed using statistics.

Analysis of examination results requires use of statistics. For example, one study has
announced that “54 schools scored a hundred percent pass rate in a given exam. 2018
recorded an increased proportion of pupils obtaining school certificates with a 4.9 percent shoot
up from 2017. The percent of boys who obtained full certificates was higher than that of girls
pegged at 63.95 percent and 59.57 percent respectively. Davao Region recorded the highest
proportion of candidates obtaining school certificates followed by NCR while CAR and Western
Visayas 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 2017
and 2018, boys and girls, regional performance, ownership of schools versus performance.
Davao Region 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 standardize the results in order to enable comparison since the number of pupils differed
from one region to the other. This analysis can also be done at by teachers at class level.

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 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 analyze 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 analyzed properly 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 analyzing this data; these improvements can be implemented as quickly as
possible.

Student attrition is the number of students who leave a program 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.

Aside from the mentioned applications of statistics in the field of education, statistics has
two general classifications namely the descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics
is the discipline of quantitatively describing the main features of a collection of information, or
the quantitative description itself. Descriptive statistics are very important because if we simply
presented our raw data it would be hard to visualize what the data was showing, especially if
there was a lot of it. Descriptive statistics therefore enables us to present the data in a more
meaningful way, which allows simpler interpretation of the data.

Descriptive statistics is very important in the field of education because it allows teachers
to interpret data based on the characteristics of the whole student population. Some of the
applications include the measurement of the mean score and spread of scores during a given
examination. For example, the mean score of 100 students may be 65 out of 100. However, not
all students will have scored 65 marks. Rather, their scores will be spread out. Some will be
lower and others higher. Measures of spread help to summarize how spread out these scores
are and interventions may be given.

Inferential statistics is the discipline of deducing properties of an underlying distribution

by analysis of data. Inferential statistical analysis infers properties about a population: this
includes testing hypotheses and deriving estimates. The mathematical procedures whereby
information is converted about the sample into intelligent guesses about the population fall
under the rubric of inferential statistics. In the field of education, inferential statistics has been
widely used either to tests hypothesis about a given problematic issue. For example, if the
teacher wants to know the significant relationship between study habits and academic
performance of the students, he or she would apply inferential statistical tools such as Pearson r
correlation. This tool would allow him or her to know if the academic performance of the
students is strongly correlated with their study habits.

Statistics indeed is playing an ever more important role in the day-to-day work in the
teaching profession, and is being used in public debate on education issues such as pupil
performance and competences. Raising statistical literacy in the teaching profession will
address problems of interpretation and usage. One does not need to be a statistician to use
statistics in the teaching profession. This should be part of the skills required in the training of
teachers. Of course, some of the uses are just unknowingly practiced. It is time to promote
statistical literacy and understanding among all teachers in our country.