Royal Statistical Society Accreditation

Royal Statistical Society accreditation

The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is one of the world's most recognised statistical societies. It is a professional body for statisticians and a charity which works to promote statistics for the public. The Society has 10,000 members in the UK and around the world, of whom a large portion are professionally qualified as Chartered Statisticians. The RSS is active in a wide range of areas both directly and indirectly relevant to statistics, data and the evidence base for policy development. It provides accreditation to honours and master's degrees in statistics and related disciplines, awarding the status of RSS Accredited University. The RSS has a responsibility to develop and maintain standards in educational qualifications for those who wish to follow a career in statistics and allied disciplines. The accreditation is set to become an important in benchmarking for higher education programmes including commercial training institutions.

There are benefits of having an institution and its students accredited. These include:

Recognition of excellence
Increasing the marketability of training programmes
Providing students with a gateway to society membership and a competitive edge within the job market.
Providing employees with expertise in technical skills and industry knowledge.

Within SSACAB, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) Biostatistics field of study under the MSc Epidemiology programme was accredited by the RSS in 2019. This was done to highlight the credibility of the courses offered and that the quality of the programme is internationally competitive.. Wits is awaiting renewal for lapsing of registration. Discussions of encouraging the partner institutions to also register with the society is also currently underway.

The deputy director for SSACAB Professor Musenge will be attending the RSS conference in London this month, August 2024, for the Alliance for Data Science Professionals. The group aims to create industry-wide professional standards for data science using an ethical and well-governed approach so that the public, organisations and governments can have confidence in how their data is being used.