A national survey to comprehensively chart children’s views of their own lives will take place across New Zealand from 4 March. It will report the voice of Kiwi kids on issues as wide-ranging as climate change to the amount of time they spend on digital devices.

CensusAtSchool New Zealand/TataurangaKiTeKura Aotearoa is a non-profit, online educational project. Now in its ninth edition, it’s a collaborative project involving teachers, the University of Auckland’s Department of Statistics, Statistics New Zealand and the Ministry of Education.

Students from Years 5 to 13 anonymously answer 30 questions in English or te reo Māori, and later explore the results in class. CensusAtSchool runs every two years. In 2017, more than 32,000 students took part, representing 534 schools and 1,062 teachers.

Key dates

• March 4: CensusAtSchool survey goes live and schools start taking part;
• By March 18 (dependent on response rate): Interesting initial statistics from the survey data released to media;
• By March 25: (dependent on response rate): Second release of statistics from the survey data released to media; and
• July 5, 2019: End of CensusAtSchool data-collection period.

For more go to new.censusatschool.org.nz