The Real Monster Under the Bed: Tackling the UK’s Data Literacy Crisis
This week, as we mark Halloween, it’s fitting to talk about something that often feels spooky to many: data. Indeed “the devil is in the data,” but if you look closely, you’ll see it’s nothing to find scary. In fact, data is everywhere—it’s the backbone of every evolving industry, technology, and aspect of everyday life.
But here’s the real trick: with anticipated changes to the labour market threatening to exacerbate existing skills shortages, businesses are feeling the impact. Whilst specialist skills and knowledge are vital in most occupations, it is transferable ‘essential employment skills’ such as informational literacy (gathering, processing, and using information) that will be in greatest demand across the labour market in 2035, according to a report published in 2023 by the National Foundation for Educational Research. To meet these demands, we will need to ensure young people have higher average levels of these skills than previous generations when they first enter the workforce. This skills gap is the real monster under the bed.
At Primary Engineer, we recognised this challenge early. “One of the core skills that we recognised was really not being addressed and was really quite hard to cover off was data and data skills,” says Dr Susan Scurlock MBE, Founder and CEO of Primary Engineer.
While some older students might be familiar with coding, making the broader world of data relatable and accessible to primary school ages is a different challenge entirely. We believe the solution is to start early, equipping students with the confidence to ‘speak data’—to understand its power in decision-making and the vital role it will play in their future careers.
That’s why, in 2020, we launched STATWARS®: Climate Change Challenge, which delivers meaningful and engaging mathematics, numeracy, science, and data handling skills. Our national data competition empowers and educates pupils in Key Stage 2 and 3, aged 8-14, to tackle climate change and influence others through social agency using data they capture themselves.
The competition follows the Data Cycle approach and provides pupils with the foundation for understanding the world, through specific science disciplines. Pupils are required to:
- Understand, use, and justify their use of both quantitative and qualitative data.
- Seek out and explain patterns and relationships in the data they gather.
- Use our bespoke carbon footprint calculator to work out their own footprint.
- Identify three changes they can personally commit to in their daily lives to lower their carbon footprint.
The final challenge requires them to become social agents. They must produce an infographic explaining their three pledges, complete with visual charts and graphs to explain the data that influenced their decisions. They then create a poster or other creative communication (like a letter to an MP or a video) to encourage others to make the same pledges. This year, common themes included shopping locally, walking/cycling to school, and reducing home electricity usage.
Susan Scurlock explains the impact: “I wanted to get children to feel empowered by the things they could do and the sphere of influence that they could have.”
Over the past five years, we’ve developed data skills in pupils across the UK by linking creativity and enjoyment to a deep, sustainable understanding of the value and use of data in all our lives, embedding it into the heart of the educational journey.
For Schools: UK schools can get started today by registering and accessing our free resources for your classroom: www.statwarscompetition.com
For Industry Partners: If you want to become a partner and help us shape the future of data literacy in the UK, get in touch today to learn about funding opportunities: https://www.primaryengineer.com/funding-enquiry/