financial-education-schools

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It is crucial to start teaching financial education at an early age

A devastating report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that the UK is well below the international average in teaching financial literacy.

Out of 30 countries examined in the report, the UK come out at 15th, ranked behind Estonia and Latvia, and just ahead of Thailand and Albania. Fundamental concepts like interest, the impact of inflation, and budgeting are only understood by a minority of people, too many of whom have a short term attitude to money, compounded by a poor overall understanding of how their own finances work.

The report emphasises the crucial importance of starting financial education at an early age, and goes on to talk about the vital role that schools should play in this whole process, which is something we at Keep the Cash! have learned a great deal about in our work over the last five years.

If schools had the materials to teach finance as part of a wider approach to equipping their students with a new set of life skills, the report suggest that this would:

ensure that future generations have the knowledge, skills and attitudes to necessary to strengthen their financial well being and build positive habits from a young age.

This important OECD report concludes that “schools can also assist children and young people in developing the skills and attitudes that will help them to achieve financial well being and build positive habits from a young age”.

Time for schools to invest in Financial Education

schools-Investing-in-Financial-Education

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The great challenge is not to persuade schools that this is a pressing problem – most teachers and parents are painfully aware of the need to do something to improve the life chances of their students – but rather to provide schools with material and lesson plans which can take students through a planned programme of education that addresses these difficult problems.

We have developed Keep the Cash! as a whole year, one day, usually off-curriculum programme, which starts the process of helping students to get to grips with a wide range of tricky problems that they will have to master, sooner or later, if they are to build solvent and independent lives.

What we are now in the process of doing, is creating a series of fully supported lesson plans and materials, which schools can use in a cross curricular programme, within the ordinary contours of the school timetable, to deliver Keep the Cash! on their own terms ,and as often as they want to.

We hope to be able to launch this new programme by the end of this academic year, and to work with schools all over the UK to oversee its implementation and delivery.

As the OECD says, it all starts at school.

Download the OECD/INFE International Survey of Adult Financial Literacy Competencies for more information on the measurement and findings.