A Coventry has become the first in the country to send in 20,000 tokens for books in the Walkers Crisps promotion – and the figure is still rising!

Parkgate School in Parkgate Road, Coventry have been collecting the tokens since the week before Christmas and their achievement is being featured in The Sun newspaper.

Headteacher Anne Mitchell is very pleased with the pupils’ achievement:

"It’s great that they are having so much fun bringing resources into the school, not only to benefit themselves, but also future generations of pupils. Who knows what the grand total will be, but so far their efforts mean around 200 books for the school."

The school has also been running some imaginative competitions over the past two weeks to keep the pupils’ interest in the collection high.

One competition challenged the pupils to see how many tokens they could fit in a matchbox – the winner managed 335 – and the closest runners up managed 225 and 213.

The tokens are still coming in – one pupil managed to collect 300 tokens in just one day and Thomas Davies in class 5V regularly bring sin over 400 tokens a week.

This week they are running a competition to see how many words of 3 letters or more pupils can make from the words "Walkers Crisps" – and James Millar in Year 4 is in the lead at the moment with 315 words so far!

Next week’s challenge is of a more artistic nature – with pupils producing pictures showing how they have been collecting their tokens.

A creative reminder of the school’s achievement has been made by a parent for the school reception area – a life sized Walkers Crisp packet person. The model is soon to be joined by two more – the Parkgate paper boy and girl – both o which will be covered in newspaper cuttings.

Spearheading the collection have been teacher co-ordinator Sarah Carpenter, in partnership with parent co-ordinators Zorena Paplauskas and Carol Robertson.