Phase 9 (08/09)

14,000 young people completed the Phase 9 questionnaire between September 2008 and September 2009. Here are some things we found out by having a look at their data.

Just over half (51%) of those completing the survey were female and the age range was between 11 and 18 inclusive.

From this sample we see girls as their first choice would own a mobile phone, second to this they would choose computer with internet.  The latter is the first choice for boys followed by owning a games console. 

Phase 9 asked which subjects pupils would like removed from the UK school curriculum.  The results are surprising with the highest frequency of  boys and of girls from this sample wanting to remove RE.  Mathematics came third.

The bar chart below shows who this sample of school-aged learners named as the most famous Olympian. 

This was asked as an open question and we had over 200 different spelling of Dame Kelly Holmes including Dame Jelly Nomes and Kelly Hope.  We also had some amazing spellings for Usain Bolt.  We are not sure which Olympian  ‘That guy who can run really fast’  is meant to be.

When this sample was asked ‘Which superpower you would like to have?’ most girls wanted to be telepathic whereas most boys wanted the ability to freeze time.

Our results from this phase of CensusAtSchool suggest that most children from this sample would prefer to be happy rather than famous, healthy or rich and this preference becomes more so as they get older.

However, when the data are split into male a female, most boys (2375) want to be rich where as the mode for girls is happy.

There is a game at the end of the Phase 9 online questionnaire. The idea of the game is to move the red square out of the way of the 4 moving blue rectangles for as long as possible. 

The graph below seems to suggest boys are better at this game than girls. The best time was 21/2 miuntes.

The Best times for Males and Female for the Interactive Game.