In the past, arguments against the use of metric units on the roads, in the media and in other areas of life cited the fact that the majority of UK adults had not been educated using the metric system.
Now, however, the Office of National Statistics’ own population figures for 2010 show that 52.38% – the majority – of the UK adult population have received a full secondary education in metric units.
This figure is the percentage of the total number of people in the UK aged 18 and above who in mid-2010 were aged 47 and below, i.e. those who were aged 11 in mid-1974, the year when metric tuition became mandatory in UK schools.
The ONS’s 2008-based population projections for 2011-2083 also show that the percentage of metric-educated adults will hit 60% as soon as 2016.
The ONS’s own population pyramid datasets can be downloaded and examined at:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/populationestimates/flash_pyramid/default.htm
This appears to take no account of the impact of emigration and immigration. It would be interesting to work through the figures. Emigration is likely to be biased towards the imperial educated elderly, off to retire in sunny climes, whereas immigration would have been overwhelmingly from metric countries. Allowing for this, my guess is that the figure now exceeds 55%. The DfT, of course, saw this coming and abandoned the argument relating to the proportion of metric educated drivers some time ago. It has now fallen back to “We can’t afford it”.
A very good point. It’s hard to factor in variables such as migration because the datasets are all different. I would be very interested in expanding this analysis to take other factors such as this into account, if equally authoritative relevant data is available.
In any event, even supposing no migration had taken place, the majority would still have been metric-educated.
There is more to education then what learns in the schools. There is exposure to metric units used in the market place, that even older citizens can figure out if they want to despite not having a metric education.
There is also on the job training. Older citizens who work for companies that have metricated would have to be trained on the job to function in metric, if not then they can be of no use to the company.
When you factor this in, the percentage goes much higher. I’m sure though that those who claim not to know metric, whether they were educated in it or not, do so of their own choosing. The idea that changes should not take place until a sufficient number of citizens has been educated in metric is just a stall tactic to keep metrication from being completed.
The metric haters may think they are fighting for the culture but what they are doing is assuring that good paying jobs for the middle and lower classes go to nearby foreign countries that use the metric system and where the people have both metricated and maintained their historical culture. Why England can’t do the same shows England can’t adapt and is thus inferior to those that have and continue to do so.