Westmorland School in Stannington, Northumberland has voluntarily taken "special measures" status in an unusual move by the school governors.
"Our pupils have been having difficulty with normal measures - centimetres, inches and the like - so we took a poll of year 1 students and discovered that they much preferred using things they were familiar with", explained headteacher, Mrs Emily Anderton.
"These five- and six-year-olds were much more comfortable measuring objects using their body parts and so we have decided to use special measures rather than the more typical ones.
"Small items can now be measured in dimensions such as 'finger widths' or 'nostril spacing', larger things in 'arm lengths' and very big things are usually measured in 'strides'. The year two classroom, for example, is eleven strides by fifteen - or six strides by nine for the teacher. Everyone knows where they stand now."
Concerns have been voiced by local parents, particularly surrounding some of the measurements undertaken by the less socially-aware younger pupils. "My four-year-old Catherine has just started in Reception class and can't understand why she can't use a willy to measure her desk when the boys in the class can", said one concerned parent. "Apart from being sexist, I'm a bit worried that she will grow up with a completely skewed idea of what constitutes six inches".
