Metrology

Foundation Degree in Metrology

Coventry University is the first institution in the UK to offer a Foundation Degree in Metrology - the science of measurement - helping to fill an important skills gap.

Metrology plays a vital role in modern life, with applications including monitoring pollutants in the air, calibrating radiotherapy equipment, ensuring vehicle safety, and keeping time universally accurate so as to allow global communications to function.

The Foundation Degree has been developed by NPL and the School of Lifelong Learning at Coventry University. NPL has played a key role in the degree's development, aligning Level 1 and Level 2 of the NPL Training Framework to Years 1 and 2 of the Foundation Degree. This will result in a dual award for the students - the degree itself and certification from NPL, the UK's national measurement institute.

The qualification has been designed to fill the specific skills gap in the understanding and application of measurement, allowing organisations to benefit from savings in both time and money through the implementation of best practice within metrology.

This new foundation degree is a key step for NPL towards metrology, gaining recognition as a National Occupational Standard (NOS). Thousands of UK employees work in metrology/calibration and yet there is no existing NOS that describes what tasks metrology/calibration practitioners perform. NPL Training is driving this change in the recognition of a new standard, championing metrology as a qualification in its own right and providing the training framework to upskill the next generation of young metrologists.