Creation and evaluation of a workplace based certificate in official statistics for government policy makers.

Statistics New Zealand recently developed a pre-university Certificate of Official Statistics aimed at increasing the statistical literacy of government policy advisors. It has four compulsory statistics units taught by academics from several New Zealand universities together with Statistics New Zealand staff, and one optional unit. Student cohorts are kept small and both the learning and assessment is based on real statistical, research, policy and media publications. The assessment is competency based and students can re-sit questions until a satisfactory standard is achieved. The first cohort of students (enrolled in 2007) was used as a pilot and evaluated for the appropriateness of the learning, possible enhancements to assessment questions and the impact of their prior level of statistical knowledge, motivation and management support on the time taken to complete units. The results of this evaluation are given together with the resulting changes made to the Certificate.