The Royal Mint has announced it has designed a range of new coins with the specific intention of helping children with arithmetic.
Penny Farthing, a Royal Mint spokesnumismatist told Newsbiscuit and a group of teachers: 'The novel system is based around dividing a pound into 240 pennies, then having coins in a range of denominations, each valued at various multiples of a penny, however a break comes at a dozen pennies, when a coin called a shilling is introduced…'
At this point, a teacher interrupted to say, 'I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. How on earth is that going to help children to count?'
'Hold on a mo,' said Penny Farthing, 'I haven’t explained about thrupenny bits, tanners, florins and half crowns yet, let alone farthings and ha’pennies which we are introducing to teach kids about fractions.'
Newsbiscuit took a straw poll of the teachers present and found none could agree that children would ever be able to comprehend such a complex series of coins.
A chap from the Co-op who was also present said he was grateful to hear the teachers’ opinion, as they had been considering introducing a series of tokens based around coin values as a means of paying dividends to customers, which had been hoped might become play money for children to assist with their numeracy, but would now ditch the idea.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash