In a related submission, I have pressed the importance of high quality statistics education in schools. This should move away from the old rather boring narrow focus on measures of location and spread, to a partly computer-based experimental exploration of variability. Encounter with the huge data resources available from the web should be an important part of student experience.
I suspect that initiatives that will seriously address the upskilling of teachers to meet the new demands (even to meet more long-standing demands) will need to come from professional bodies — notably perhaps AMSI, the AMS, SSAI and perhaps also ACSPRI. I suggest ACSPRI because they have a well-tested administrative setup into which new courses can be readily slotted. They put more students through their statistics short-course offerings than any other Australian organisation. Relative to SSAI courses, their focus is towards more elementary courses.
Are there “division of responsibility” or other such obstacles to the mounting of such courses? Retired as well as currently serving academics might be encouraged to offer their services at (in the first instance, at least) no or minimum cost.
The University of Auckland Statistics department’s work with teachers (and with software development) suggests possibilities. See http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/for/schools. I suggest getting Chris Wild across for a lecture tour that would focus on teaching at a school and beginning undergraduate level, and on school/University links? John Harraway from Otago University has also, I believe, been active in fostering such links.