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SummaryThere has never been a more exciting time to be involved in statistics. Emerging data sources provide new sorts of evidence, provoke new sorts of questions, make possible new sorts of answers and shape the ways that evidence is used to influence policy, public opinion and business practices.Significant developments include open data, big data, data visualisation and the rise of data-driven journalism. These developments are changing the nature of the evidence that is available, the ways in which it is presented and used and the skills needed for its interpretation. Educators should place less emphasis on small samples and linear models and more emphasis on large samples, multivariate description and data visualisation. Techniques used to analyse big data need to be taught. The increasing diversity of data usage requires deeper conceptual analysis in the curriculum; this should include explorations of the functions of modelling, and the politics of data and ethics. The data revolution can invigorate the existing curriculum by exemplifying the perils of biassed sampling, corruption of measures and modelling failures. Students need to learn to think statistically and to develop an aesthetic for data handling and modelling based on solving practical problems.

A small-scale study of the inter-rater and staff:client reliability of the Schalock & Keith (1993) Quality of Life Questionnaire (QOL-Q) was conducted. Whilst the sample size was small and the QOL-Q achieved an acceptable overall level of reliability, the study replicated the pattern of low staff:client concordance and staff overestimation of the independence and autonomy of clients reported by Reiter & Bendov (1996). The results are briefly discussed in the context of the ongoing debate about the utility of proxy response in the literature.

The National Curriculum for England and Wales specifies a number of programmes of study and attainment targets relevant to Information Technology. New regulations to be introduced for teacher training courses specify compulsory elements related to the effective use of computers in class. This study reports a survey of 109 student teachers who were asked about their experiences of IT on their first teaching practice. It revealed a rather low spontaneous use of computers, a focus on a narrow range of software, which emphasized practice of basic skills. The course which these students are following fails to meet new requirements, and teachers were ill‐prepared to face the rigours of the National Curriculum; nevertheless, some positive lessons were learned from the study. While non‐users identified a lack of confidence and basic skill as the major reason for not using IT in class, users reported high pupil enjoyment, few problems using IT, and gains in personal confidence as a result of their classroom experiences. It is concluded that future courses should focus initially on the development of personal confidence, and should encourage the early use of IT in teaching practice, if we are to avoid the situation where new entrants to the teaching profession simply add to the pool of teachers in need of training in the use of IT.

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