Free Economics, Business Studies and Geography teaching packs for students aged 16 and over are now available to download under the Open Government Licence.
The Office for National Statistics released new classroom materials on 22 September 2026 under its Navigating Numbers programme, offering presentation packs, student toolkits and teacher guides at no cost to further-education colleges and sixth forms. The resources are built around official ONS datasets and are designed to help students aged 16 and over analyse statistics and apply them to practical, real-life issues.
The new materials target three subjects specifically: Economics, Business Studies and Geography. Teachers can download and reuse them freely under the Open Government Licence, and the ONS describes them as curriculum-linked and classroom-ready — designed to support AS and A-level or equivalent teaching.
Navigating Numbers now spans five classroom toolkits in total. Earlier materials covered topics including inflation, gender pay gaps, health and wellbeing, business, industry and trade and census data. The Association of Colleges supported the programme’s development.
The ONS says the aim is to strengthen students’ ability to interpret data, assess evidence and understand how statistics inform everyday decisions. But the resources are teaching materials, not a qualification — and no independent figure was provided for the number of schools or students currently using them, nor any verified data on their effect on attainment or statistical literacy outcomes.
That gap matters. Curriculum-linked toolkits may well reduce lesson-preparation time for teachers and give learners direct experience of working with current datasets. Whether that translates into measurable improvements in critical thinking or examination results remains unverified.
Key information
- Free download: resources available at no cost to teachers via sign-up on the ONS website
- Subjects covered: Economics, Business Studies and Geography
- Eligible students: aged 16 and over in further education or sixth form
- Licence: Open Government Licence — materials can be reused freely
Source: @ONS