Data Science for Schools

Data Matters: A School without walls”

A project under the “Data Science Initiative”

PCBS has been aware of the importance of data, that’s why many activities were designed to target school students as a specific target of data users. Activities include Schools’ Statistical Competition, which was conducted in 2017 & 2018 and the launching of a child- friendly portal on PCBS’ website targeting school children in 2016 (http://pcbs.gov.ps/students/index.php). The portal includes statistical games and provides basic statistical skills presented in an easy visual method. Moreover, PCBS organizes school visits to its premises to introduce students to statistics and its work.

If science explains how the world works, data science uses data to draw insights and solve problems around us. The abilities to understand and reason with data, or arguments that use data, are necessary for citizens to understand material presented in their daily lives.

Every day, students are surrounded by data: curriculum, test results, game scores, sports and so on. Many worldwide initiatives were carried out to strengthen the data science approach for kids to enhance their analytical data skills through using advanced technologies to study a certain issue and become creative problem solvers in their own way using fancy and visually attractive tools (interactive graphs, mapping tools, and charting components).

Our Data Science Initiative for students aims to advance the essential analytical skills for them to become familiar in data organization, visualization and critical thinking.

PCBS and Arab American University of Palestine (AAUP) are planning to conduct under the Data Science Initiative a project titled “A School Without Walls” over the next three years in cooperation with the Ministry of Education (MoE). The initiative will target 15 schools for students across all Palestinian schools (public, private, and UNRWA) as one of the visibility action plan of the Data Science Initiative.

Recent statistical figures reveal that 45% of the Palestinian population are under the age of 18 years  (2,226,077)[1] whereas the number of students who enrolled in schools in Palestine was 1,282,054 students for the scholastic year (2018/2019)[2].

 

The objectives of the project include:

  1. To bridge the gap between perception and reality of data science;
  2. To encourage students for better use of data to benefit the society;
  3. To transform all educational fields through the application of data science;
  4. To foster collaboration in advancing techniques to gather and interpret data to address the urgent problems facing society;
  5. To advance the essential analytical skills for students;
  6. To strengthen the coordination with main partners and stakeholders as MoE.

 

[1] Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2019.  Revised Estimated based on the final results of Population, Housing and Establishments Census, 2017. Ramallah – Palestine.

 

[2] Ministry of Education, 2019. Data base of education survey for Scholastic Year 2018\2019. Ramallah – Palestine

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