London, United Kingdom – September 07, 2021 – Exasol, the high-performance analytics database, has today announced that it has become a national funding partner for not-for-profit organization, Primary Engineer’s, STATWARS® competition. The competition aims to get primary and secondary pupils excited about data by embedding it into the heart of the educational system so they can more inherently develop a better understanding of its value in business and in everyday life. 

This is especially important today with recent research from Exasol raising questions about the role that education plays in preparing young people to enter an increasingly data-driven workplace. The study found that 16-to-21-year-olds don’t feel their schooling goes far enough in teaching them the data skills necessary for the workplace, despite half (49%) agreeing that working with data will play a major role in their future career. 

It is exactly for this reason that the objective of the STATWARS® competition directly aligns with Exasol’s own belief that this untapped potential could spur a revolution in the way data is used to transform the world around us. 

“We are thrilled to be partnering with STATWARS® to support its goal in inspiring and encouraging more young people to get excited by data,” said Peter Jackson, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, Exasol. “In today’s increasingly data-driven world, if we do not have the right people with the right skills who know how to process, interpret, and make data actionable, we are in danger of missing out on new ways to solve data challenges and push the boundaries as we know it. That’s why it was important for us to get involved in the STATWARS® competition. The next generation of young prodigies will be our future data champions, playing a significant role in helping to solve some of the world’s most important challenges.” 

STATWARS® is a free competition that is open to Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 pupils. Running throughout the 2021/22 UK school year, the competition encompasses two data projects: STATWARS®: Climate Change Challenge, which empowers and educates young people to tackle climate change using data, and STATWARS® Film & TV, which encourages young people to engage with data by designing a film or TV series.

Both projects provide two entry points for young people to become excited about analyzing, interrogating, and presenting data. It does so by promoting an understanding of real-world use of mathematics, allowing pupils to follow simple or complex lines of enquiry from start to finish, conjecture relationships and generalizations in order to develop coherent, justified arguments that are based on thorough data analysis. 

STATWARS® provides free teaching resources including lesson plans, activity sheets and video tutorials to unlock the value of data, as well as live interviews with data experts and skills sessions from experts. By connecting with data specialists and industry professionals in the competition pupils access multiple opportunities to learn from employers about work, employment and the skills that are valued in the workplace.

Dr Susan Scurlock, Chief Executive at Primary Engineer, welcomed the partnership by saying: “We are delighted that Exasol is supporting the STATWARS® competition. Data analysis is a crucial aspect to many things in everyday life – often in unexpected and surprising ways. That was the starting point for the competition which gives young people the opportunity to analyze their own carbon impact or find the next hit TV show. It encourages them to collect and unpick data then use it to form their outcome and explain their decision. Having Exasol as one of our national partners allows us to link today’s data analysts with tomorrows – helping them build their knowledge and find out how much fun data really is!”

ENDS

About Exasol

Exasol was founded in 2000 with the vision to transform how organizations use data. Today, Exasol’s analytics database – the fastest in the world – is trusted by the world’s most ambitious organizations. With offices in several locations across the US and Europe, Exasol is committed to delivering flexible, scalable and powerful analytics solutions to customers wherever they are, in the cloud or on-premises. 

Exasol – accelerating insights from the world’s data.

Learn more at: www.exasol.com and follow us on social media: LinkedIn and Twitter.

About STATWARS®

STATWARS® is a data project, with multiple curriculum links to science, mathematics, computing, engineering as well as English and even geography. The engagement with data specialists and industry professionals in the competition allows pupils multiple opportunities to learn from employers about work, employment and the skills that are valued in the workplace. STATWARS® has been developed by Primary Engineer® and is fully funded across the UK by several funding partners. STATWARS® provides free teaching resources including lesson plans, activity sheets and video tutorials to unlock the value of data, as well as live interviews with data experts and skills sessions from experts. For more information visit www.statwarscompetition.com.

About Primary Engineer

STATWARS® is a fully-funded annual competition developed by Primary Engineer®. Primary Engineer is an educational not-for-profit organisation that provides a suite of programmes to encourage children from 3 to 19 years to consider STEM and data careers. Primary Engineer inspires children, pupils, parents and teachers through continued professional development, whole class project work, competitions, and engagement with industry professionals to ensure the learning has a context to the wider world. Primary Engineer promotes engineering and data careers and addresses the diversity and gender imbalance in engineering and data with early years, primary and secondary pupils. For further information visit www.primaryengineer.com.

PR Contacts:
Izzy Ward, EMEA PR Manager at Exasol
Email: [email protected]

Alex Gribbin, Primary Engineer
Email: [email protected] 

The post Exasol Joins Forces With STATWARS® to Inspire the Next Generation to Use Data to Address Real-World Challenges first appeared on Primary Engineer.

The STATWARS Climate Change Challenge has been designed for Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 pupils and asks them to use data to understand their personal impact on climate change and commit to 3 changes in lifestyle. Schools have opportunities to join live online sessions with data and climate professionals and teachers are provided with lesson plans and resources. The competition requires pupils to illustrate their findings and pledge in the form of an infographic, a poster and a 60 second media pitch.

The recording of Graham’s session will help you to understand what STATWARS looks like in the classroom as he highlights how the project provides teachers and pupils with access to a diverse range of data and climate professionals who they can interview and be inspired by. Graham demonstrates the student-centred, cross curricular and real-world, project-based learning within STATWARS and how research shows these as vital tools in effective STEM learning.

As a resource rich project, you’ll be happy to know that we provide everything free to use, from schemes of work, lesson plans and presentations, to “how to” videos in case you or your pupils require a bit of help handling data!

During his session, Graham was joined by teacher and STATWARS advocate, Hilary Gorman of Harrysmuir Primary in West Lothian who provides an inspiring account of the impact STATWARS Climate Change Challenge has had on her and her pupils, which you’ll not want to miss.

Please visit www.statwarscompetition.com for more information and to begin your pupils’ fight against climate change!

The post On 25th May, Graham Stow, Head of Education at Primary Engineer presented the STATWARS Climate Change Challenge as part of the STEM Learning Climate Conference for teachers. first appeared on Primary Engineer.

By showcasing how data skills are essential to tackling one of the most important issues of their time – climate change – the challenge is an opportunity to get young minds inspired by analysing, interrogating, and presenting data.  

The partnership with Primary Engineer® for STATWARS® extends the Royal Society’s objective to champion science in schools and will allow both organisations to carry out creative programmes that embed STEM and data into school curriculums, enriching opportunities for all pupils. 

Participating schools can apply for a Royal Society grant, worth up to £3,000, to undertake a STEM research project, drawing on industry and academic partnerships they have developed as part of the STATWARS® challenge.

This extends the work of the Royal Society’s Tomorrows Climate Scientists programme, funded through its Partnership Grants scheme, in supporting students from age 5 to 18 to investigate and mitigate the local effects of climate change and biodiversity loss that are affecting their own communities. 

Susan Scurlock, CEO and Founder of Primary Engineer, said:

“This is an exceptional partnership with the Royal Society which will see pupils investigate the big scientific question that matters to them – how to tackle climate change.  STATWARS® is free to all primary and secondary schools and provides opportunities for pupils to develop data science skills which are incredibly important to our understanding of the world and for future careers.  The partnership with The Royal Society will raise the profile and importance of data science and data skills by enabling teachers and pupils to work on an engaging, curriculum-mapped project.”

Professor Sir Jim Hough OBE FRS, physicist and Chair of the Royal Society Partnership Grants programme, said:

”We are delighted to be partnering with STATWARS to enable pupils to address issues around climate change and to develop data science skills using real world data. This will be a fantastic opportunity for them to make a significant contribution to help solve specific climate change problems while still at any early stage of their education.”

More information about the Partnership Grants scheme, with detailed guidance for schools, can be found at www.royalsociety.org/partnership.  For further information and to register for STATWARS®, visit www.statwarscompetition.com.  

About Primary Engineer

STATWARS® is a free-to-schools annual competition developed by Primary Engineer®. Primary Engineer is an educational not-for-profit organisation that provides a suite of programmes to encourage children from 3 to 19 years to consider STEM and engineering careers. Primary Engineer inspires children, pupils, parents and teachers through continued professional development, whole class project work, competitions, and engagement with engineers and industry professionals to ensure the learning has a context to the wider world. Primary Engineer promotes engineering and data careers and addresses the diversity and gender imbalance in engineering with early years, primary and secondary pupils.

About The Royal Society

The Royal Society is a self-governing Fellowship of many of the world’s most distinguished scientists drawn from all areas of science, engineering, and medicine. The Society’s fundamental purpose, as it has been since its foundation in 1660, is to recognise, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity. http://royalsociety.org. 

Follow the Royal Society on Twitter (@royalsociety) or on Facebook (facebook.com/theroyalsociety)

The post Royal Society and Primary Engineer’s STATWARS Partnership to Help Pupils Investigate Climate Change first appeared on Primary Engineer.

It doesn’t end there though… We also have a UNIQUE interview panel with the Met Office that
coincides with the worldwide event, Earth Day 2021! Our aim is to give your pupils a platform to put forward their climate questions to industry-recognised professors who have specialised in our environment, as well as increasing their knowledge of how data is used by the Met Office science experts.

Following an influx of incredible engineering and data interviews that featured brilliant Q&A
questions, we have updated our YouTube channel, so whenever you have a spare minute, there are plenty for you to listen and watch.

After receiving incredible reviews and feedback from our national CPD training courses, we still have a few places available for Early Years, Primary and Secondary teachers. To see CPD training courses please click here.

Last, but definitely not least, is an upcoming Primary Engineer podcast. And we’re inviting YOU to be part of it! We want to shine a spotlight on the brilliant engineering ideas of your pupils, so we’d like to hear from them and you! We’ve created a handy, how-to guide to make sending us their audio as easy as possible.

REMINDER: Our ‘If You Were an Engineer, What Would You Do?’ deadline is the 30th of APRIL, so post in your pupils’ annotated inventions to be read and graded by engineers across every discipline. Certificates are sent back, celebrating the ingenuity and hard work of every single member of your class. Some will even be chosen to be in our exhibitions, as well as potentially being built by one of our partner universities. Also, the deadline for ‘STATWARS’ is the 30th of JUNE, so remember get those data investigations in!

The post Primary Engineer and the Month Ahead first appeared on Primary Engineer.

Please visit https://www.statwarscompetition.com for all our STATWARS competitions

To register please visit https://www.statwarscompetition.com/login/

The post STATWARS COMPETITION – THE UK’S LEADING DATA COMPETITION FOR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS first appeared on Primary Engineer.

On September 23rd 2019, Greta Thunberg addressed the UN at the Climate Change Action Summit. Her statement was a rousing one:

“My message is that we’ll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!… We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”

At that time, Greta was 16 years old. At Primary Engineer, we believe that children do have a voice, and that we should be doing everything we can do help that voice shout loud!

On the 18th March 2020 at DataFest, Primary Engineer will launch the STATWARS: Climate Change Challenge for primary and secondary pupils. The launch will bring together climate experts, data professionals, teachers and pupils interested in taking part in the project. There will be guest speakers, pupil interviews with the experts and professionals, fun activities and more…

The aim of the event is to help attendees build their knowledge of the STATWARS project, climate change issues and the importance of data in tackling such challenges.

The STATWARS®: Climate Change Challenge vision is to empower and educate pupils to tackle climate change, by providing a project that delivers meaningful and engaging mathematics, numeracy and data literacy to pupils!

We will use the data we collect during this project to support meaningful research and decision making, with its careful application revolutionising our understanding of how to manage the Climate Change Challenge ahead of us! We need young people to be a part of that journey…

How does STATWARS® Climate Change Challenge work?

Pupils will:

• Design and create a data driven infographic poster, documenting their research on climate
  change and 3 things they will change to help reduce carbon emissions
• Design and create an advertisement poster/manifesto pledge, where pupils can explore ways of
  drawing attention to their ideas for change and encourage others to join them on their journey.
• Produce a 60-sec pitch to support their manifesto and encourage others to join them.

The competition’s structure encourages pupils to apply mathematics not just creatively, but logically, to research, collect, analyse and present data, whilst drawing on their own personal experiences to support their climate change manifesto. The nature of the project encourages and develops meta-skills related to teamwork, leadership, curiosity, empathy, critical thinking and resilience, as teams are asked to consider indeterminate problems and develop data driven hypothesis.

So, get involved and help your pupils make a difference to the world we live in!

For more information please email [email protected] and visit www.statwarscompetition.com/climatechange  STATWARS® runs annual competitions that have been developed by Primary Engineer Programmes for The Institution of Primary Engineers® and The Institution of Secondary Engineers®.

The post STATWARS CLIMATE CHANGE CHALLENGE LAUNCH DATAFEST 2020 first appeared on Primary Engineer.

Our STATWARS competition is designed to encourage a generation of young people, to engage with data and use it to design a film or TV series. The competition’s structure encourages pupils to apply mathematics – not just creatively, but logically, to collect, analyse and present data, whilst drawing on their own personal experiences of what makes great entertainment.

Get involved now, because time is running out to make the 11th May deadline! The competition is designed to cover a whole term, so you can really develop your pupil’s data handling and mathematics skills, alongside core skills, such as teamwork, problem solving and communication!

To find out more and get involved, visit www.statwarscompetition.com where you can register and access the FREE resources, which include a comprehensive scheme of work, lesson plans, presentations, curriculum mapping and much more!

The post Lights, Camera… Data! Last chance to register for the STATWARS competition! first appeared on Primary Engineer.

National schools ‘STATWARS®’ competition launched at DataFest 2019

Calling all budding Steven Spielbergs, Kathryn Bigelows or Peter Jacksons, Netflix fans, and promising BBC Data Scientists! A national competition to design a film or tv series based on data has been launched today at DATAFEST 2019 – the UK’s first ever two-week festival of data innovation in Scotland. The STATWARS® competition was created by Primary Engineer® and is supported by a number of leading engineering organisations, as well as The BBC. Designed to encourage a generation of young people to engage with data, STATWARS® will be an annual, national competition culminating in awards and exhibitions. Interested schools are encouraged to sign up, log on and register your interest in the teaching resources via www.statwarscompetition.com, full resource packs will be available from May.

Funding from Skills Development Scotland Digital enabled a pilot to be delivered to Scottish schools which will be celebrated at the first awards ceremony at City of Glasgow College as part of DATAFEST.

Dr Susan Scurlock MBE, founder of Primary Engineer, the organisation which encourages children into engineering career pathways, said: “Anyone who has ever wondered what makes a great movie probably considers the actors, the director, the action and the storyline. Few of us really understand the data behind a smash hit. But a closer look at the burgeoning film and TV marketplace reveals that the likes of the BBC, Netflix and Amazon Prime use extensive data analysis to create many of their most popular TV series and films. This new competition is a fantastic opportunity for children to see the value, fun and potential career paths of data-driven engineering. We are grateful to all those who have given their time and energy to develop and support this new programme and to Skills Development Scotland Digital and the DATALAB for their financial and moral support through-out”.

STATWARS® was launched today at the City of Glasgow College Riverside campus as part of DATAFEST 2019 by Mr Ivan McKee, MSP, Minister for Trade, Investment and Innovation. He said: “I am delighted to be launching STATWARS® as part of DataFest 2019. The Scottish Government’s STEM Strategy highlights the importance of young people being confident in data and digital skills for work and life in the modern world. We want to encourage school pupils to get involved in data and digital at an early age – opportunities like this are fantastic in helping to make this happen.”

And it’s already beginning – results of a pilot that has been running in 19 schools across Scotland were also announced and each winning pupil received a Nightingale Award, named in honour of Florence Nightingale, the renowned humanitarian who is less well known for being a leading statistician. A full list of the award-winning ‘STATWARRIORS’ and their schools is listed in the notes:

On the STEM-by-Stealth® educational value of the competition, Susan added: “STATWARS® provides an entry point for young people to become excited about analysing, interrogating and presenting data. It also helps them develop the skills to use data securely in an inspiring subject area that touches everyone’s life. We’ll be working with renowned leaders in the data sector to engage the industry and inspire the children and young people who get involved.”

Alongside Primary Engineer, Skills Development Scotland (SDS Digital, The BBC and The Data Lab, STATWARS® is supported by several leading engineering companies and educational establishments including AMS NEVE, Scottish Engineering, Strathclyde University, Cloch Solicitors, Bad Dinosaur, ScotlandIS and WEIR Group.

Claire Gillespie, sector manager for digital technologies at SDS, said: “Data analysis is a vital skill for the workforce of the future. The ability to get under the skin of data, and make impactful decisions based on the understanding of that data, is so important to so many organisations. We loved the fact that STATWARS is helping to promote that message and skill set in a really fun, engaging and relevant way. I’m really looking forward to seeing the results.”

With an eye on the benefit for educators as well as pupils, STATWARS® provides free teaching resources including lesson plans, activity sheets and video tutorials that help unlock the value of data.  The competition is also an open invitation to data scientists and analysts to provide their expertise to the younger generation via video or in-person visits to their local educational institutions.

Whether you are an educator looking to inspire your pupils, a student looking for something a bit different to do with data or a data scientist looking to lend your expertise, please visit www.statwarscompetition.com to get involved.

The post Lights, Camera…Data! first appeared on Primary Engineer.

Move over Spielberg, STATWARRIORS® are coming your way…

Everyone loves a good film or TV show, but what makes one? This is the question that has been circulating around Primary Engineer Programmes headquarters. The team have been busy developing the next big thing to encourage primary and secondary pupils (and later in the year – college and university students) to interogate data to create their own sure-fire award-winning hit film or TV show concept. The primary and secondary teaching resources provide a dataset of over 2,000 data points, lesson plans, teaching resources, activity sheets and video tutorials.

STATWARS® is set to change the way you teach data science and develop critical thinking skills in a creative context. All teaching materials are provided free to UK based learning institutions.

We are excited to be launching the outcomes of the competition pilot in association with Skills Development Scotland, Data Lab, the BBC and City of Glasgow College on the 14th March 2019 as part of DATAFEST19 with the Scottish Minister for Trade, Investment and Innovation Mr Ivan McKee.

Keep an eye on our social media channels for updates throughout #BSW19

If you can’t wait head over to the https://www.statwarscompetition.com to find out more!

The post Something new for British Science Week 2019 #BSW19 first appeared on Primary Engineer.