Welcome to a look into our Year 6 club designed to get children thinking about “Me, my life and my money”.
This week we undertook a detailed look using real £20 bank notes and investigating the security measures in our currency.
The Bank of England and the UK Government take extensive security steps to ensure that money is safe from counterfeiting. As the financial system is based on trust, it is very important that people have confidence in their money and that it retains its value. Security elements such as choices of colours and fonts on the polymer material money is made from, holograms, watermarks and embedded metallic threads are used to keep the money in the UK safe.
We also discussed the change in 2017 from paper to plastic which means our current notes:
- last 2.5 times longer
- are waterproof and more robust
- are cheaper to make
We pondered the question, “With society now moving more and more to electronic/contactless payments, is it still important for the Bank of England to spend substantial amounts of money in this effort?”.
What do you think?
We watched an informative video where we looked at money and bank notes in greater detail. Click on the image below to watch it on YouTube
Our session ended with us designing our own new £15 note, having first discussed and shared our ideas on who should be featured on this note and why.
Next week, we will be thinking about what money we use when we are travelling abroad and learning about exchange rates, how they are set, and when and where is the best time to exchange currency.
