The series of four articles on the outcome of the EU referendum continues with a look at how the current measurement muddle came about.
Tag: Education
OECD report highlights problems with numeracy in England
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recently published a report entitled “Building Skills for All: A Review of England”, part of the OECD Skills Studies series of reports. Ronnie Cohen considers its findings.
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A day at the National Museum of Measurement
The summer holidays are in full swing, so John Frewen-Lord provides us with some light reading for a lazy day, plus a reminder that it is back to school in a month. Now where are my sun glasses?
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The white heat cools
We review the events that followed the announcement in May 1965 of a change of Government policy on the adoption of metric weights and measures.
Decimal currency, metric measures and the vanished link
For over a century, the introduction of metric measures in the UK was linked to that of decimal currency. But then, while we were saying farewell to £sd, the situation changed. We follow the story and draw an unsurprising conclusion.
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Has SI delivered?
The fuss about measurement units at the start of this century has overshadowed progress thirty years earlier in education, science and engineering. We look at the benefits that were predicted at the start of the transition to SI and ask if they have been delivered.
It’s official – the UK’s hybrid collection of measures is here to stay
Recently, one of our readers wrote to his MP about the UK’s measurement muddle. He received a reply from the office of the Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts MP, who has responsibility for measurement standards in the UK. This reply confirms that the Government has no plan to reduce the current mixture of units in common use in the UK or to promote a single system of measurement for all purposes.
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An old habit dies hard
One of our regular contributors, John Frewen-Lord, observes that the beauty and value of the built-in simplicity and coherence of the metric system is not being learned by the UK population despite forty years of teaching.
Metric Views 