CensusAtSchool is a non-profit making international project funded by organisations interested in promoting good use of statistics, mathematics and data handling. Ireland became involved in CensusAtSchool in 2009 when the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST), the CSO, Project Maths and the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) collaborated to set-up the Irish website www.censusatschool.ie.

4,199 (1.1%) from an estimated 380,000 secondary school students completed the Phase 15 questionnaire of the CensusAtSchool survey between September 2015 and August 2016. The questionnaire covered a variety of topics ranging from 1916 related topics, the level of Irish speaking to the type of school transport used.

Interesting findings from Phase 15 results:

• Over a third of secondary school students have visited the GPO. See Figure 1. Students who enjoy history are more than twice as likely as those who do not to have visited the 1916-1922 historical sites identified in the questionnaire. See Figure 2. 
• Just under half (44%) of students are transported to school by car. Only one fifth of students walk to school. See Figure 3.
• Exam and transition year students were less likely to know that the Census was conducted in April. See Figure 4.
• The top three social networks and apps used were Youtube, Snapchat and Instagram. Females were far more likely to use Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat than males. See Figure 5.
• Almost two thirds of students reported an ability to speak Irish (65%). Of those who can speak Irish, 63% never speak it outside school. See Figure 6a and 6b. Males are less likely than females to speak Irish outside school if they live in the Gaeltacht. This trend is not affected by the type of school attended. See Figure 7a and 7b.
• Students were asked to indicate which sports they played in the previous year. The percentage of male students who played no sports was greater than the percentage of female students. Female students played a greater range of sports than males in general. See Figure 8.
• Students were asked to indicate what word they would use to describe being Irish. The top two terms for both male and female students were “Proud” and “Hard-working”. See Figure 9a and 9b.

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