The Royal Statistical Society's Teaching Statistics Section invites you to join us for our Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Friday 11 December 2026, 12-2pm (UK time). The event will take place in person at Imperial College London and online (via Teams).
Come along to hear about our Section's activities, future plans and opportunities to get involved!
For those joining online, joining instructions will be sent to registered participants the day before the event.
Programme
12-12.30pm: Refreshments
12.30-1.30pm: Guest talk
1.30-2pm: AGM
We are delighted to welcome Dr Alun Owen (Coventry University) as our guest speaker. Please see their talk title and abstract below.
This talk will show that there are currently approximately 1.5 million undergraduate students in higher education across the UK studying courses that involve some requirement to study statistics, quantitative methods, or data analysis. Drawing on anecdotal evidence from 35 years of teaching statistics to students across a wide range of disciplines in higher education, coupled with over 15 years working in a Mathematics and Statistics Support context, we explore who these students are, what they are learning, and how they are being taught, with some discussion of how we think they should be taught.
Two conclusions emerge: (1) the demand for learning statistics in higher education is very high and continues to grow; and (2) there is a need to do more to develop the confidence and skills of those teaching these students.
Dr Alun Owen (Coventry University)
Alun has been teaching statistics in higher education since 1991. He was awarded the IMA's John Blake University Teaching Medal in 2025 and a National Teaching Fellowship in 2023 for his pioneering work in the development of statistics support in higher education. Since 2008, he has been at the forefront of developing statistics support as a field in its own right, leading the development and delivery of statistics support services through the work of sigma, a HEFCE-funded Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL). After the CETL funding ceased in 2016, he established a Special Interest Group in Statistics Support under the umbrella of the sigma Network (
https://www.sigma-network.ac.uk/), the national network of mathematics and statistics support professionals from across the UK and beyond. As well as serving as Chair of the sigma Network Steering Committee, Alun is the longest-serving editor of MSOR Connections (
https://journals.gre.ac.uk/index.php/msor), having been part of the small group that relaunched the journal in 2014. He is also a regular presenter at the annual CETL-MSOR Conference (
https://www.sigma-network.ac.uk/cetl-msor-conference-2027/), the UK's premier higher education teaching and learning conference for the mathematical sciences.
Members - FREE
Non-members - £10.00