RSC views are valued

The UK media is increasingly seeking the views of the RSC on important topical issues, most recently energy and education.

Today the CNN website team asked to interview the RSC chief executive about biofuel, to contribute to a special CNN week of reporting on future fuel demand and supply. This followed reports elsewhere that Richard Pike had said that a one-way jumbo jet flight to New York would consume biofuel produced by cultivating an area equivalent to 30 football pitches.

Last weekend the Sunday Telegraph asked if the RSC would be willing to comment upon a national examination paper for 14-year-old pupils in the UK, which the newspaper believed to be of a damagingly low standard with questions easily answered.   

The previous weekend the Sunday Times had featured a large news story about the current RSC "5-decade exam challenge" by which the organisation is asking 16-year-old pupils in the UK to sit an on-line examination in which they would be posed questions from chemistry papers set in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and the present decade. The RSC is offering a £1,000 prize for the winner and nine £500 prizes for the nine runners-up, with equivalent amounts going to the schools at which the pupils study.

Related links 

Sunday Telegraph
Article on national examinations for 14-year olds