Census 2011 Schools resources Census 2011 Schools resources

Welcome to our School Resources page.

The census is a key source of information for everyone in our country. It provides information in relation to who we are, what we do and how we live our daily lives. This in turn provides the knowledge that we all need to make decisions and plan for the future. The Census is used by people all over the country including the government, local authorities, businesses, local communities and students who use it for a wide variety of purposes. You can explore these uses in more detail by clicking on the following link “Why do it?”

General Information for Students and Teachers

Why is the census of interest to students?

The information that we get from the census pervades our daily lives. It provides us with:

• the data we need to understand who we are and what we do, and

• the ability to use the information to create knowledge about what we need and how to best go about acting on the information to achieve the best outcome for everyone.  

It describes the society in which we live and helps us to understand that society better, whether in the make up of our ages, origins, activities or any of the other key attributes for which data is collected in the census.

Learning about the census and about how to effectively use census and other statistical data is a key part of our education. It helps us to understand our society and our role as responsible citizens in participating in that society.

You may not realise it but, as a student, the census is relevant to several different subject areas that you study in primary and secondary school.
 

Census 2011 Schools resources

 
It helps us to learn some very important skills. For instance learning how data is collected, analysed and reported in a meaningful way not only helps our maths, presentational and descriptive skills but it helps us to understand the data that is presented to us. It gives us the skills to ask questions to find the facts to support our understanding of what is happening in the world around us in a meaningful way. As students you will use these skills in many of your future studies whether these are in the areas of maths, business, economics, history, geography or in conducting scientific projects.

Census information is available for Ireland as a whole or by region, for our cities, by county, electoral division and for the first time in 2011 by small areas. This allows us to view and compare the results compiled for different geographical areas, whether we want to compare Ireland as a whole with our own local area or own local area with neighbouring areas.

It also helps us to understand our past. The availability of old census returns from 1901 and 1911 on the National Archives website has been hugely popular with Irish people all over the world, who want to find out about their ancestors and about how we as a nation lived at the start of the last century. The availability of these returns provides us with endless opportunities to study and analyse our past, to view the development of our society at a national or local level over time, to view trends and to gain an appreciation of our past. Just think, the census forms that we complete in 2011, although they won’t be available to see until 2112 under the 100 year confidentiality rule, will show us as we are in 2011 and allow our descendants to get to know us better and to see how things have changed over the course of the 21st century.

The census is also of course an important source of socio-enonomic data and provides the basis for the analysis of much other socio-economic statistical data that we see and use in our daily lives. The skills that students learn from studying and analyzing the census will be relevant in their study of economics and business in addition to providing very useful information for their research into various aspects of these fields of study and in the decision making that they will make in their future careers.

Census data is available for everyone to use. The results of Census 2011 will be published online on the CSO website at www.cso.ie/census, where you can also find extensive interactive data from the census held in 2006, 2002 and 1996. All of this data is searchable and is free for use by anyone.
  Census 2011 Schools resources Census 2011 Schools resources