Home » Forums

[MSE Lawrence]

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.

Read Martin's 'Nice to see a politician listening' Blog.

Click reply to discuss below.

[jamtart6]

That is great news! Well done Martin!

There is usually a slot in secondary school timetable such as "Citizenship", "Personal, Social and Health education" or such like. We were taught about the stock market in one of these session aged about 16 and had to pick our shares, place our imaginary money and track them over a few months. It was very interesting and slotted right into one of the PSHE sessions, which something like this could do too.

[beer tins]

I like the way he used Martin's mantra about kids being educated into debt, but not about debt. I hope he doesn't claim that one for himself!

Good to have a politician listening for a change. The tax cuts are a good idea, but will the super-rich not pack their bags for more lucrative climes if the loopholes are closed? Personally I don't believe in the trickle down theory anyway, more in the trickle up theory. Nearly all the money you give to the poorest goes straight back into the economy, because they spend the highest proportion of their income every month through necessity.

[EricHitchmo]

What we really need is a proper education in citizenship.

Financial education should be one part of this, along with learning about all kinds of things about community and politics and how to be an engaged citizen. Democracy and its weaknesses, using the freedom of information act, voting, corporate power, the influence of the wealthy on politics, identity theft, civil rights, coalition and union forming, law. Ethics in investments.

I have been disappointed at the lack of attention paid on MoneSavingExpert best buy lists and the site in general to ethical investments. Ethics can now include not only the type of investments (such as arms trading, developing world debt) but also the responsibility of an institution in terms of its finances. We should learn to think about money in terms of wider significance than just the bottom line of how much a give savings account pays.

[brightonman123]

how very PC...Gordo gets paid to ru(i)n the country, not me!

all i got in school was some banker (Midlands at the time- now aka HSBC - showing us how to write to a cheque. wooo..

[Errata]

LibDems have been debating school finanacial education in the House since April 2007, and probably talking about it before that.

Mr. Willis argued that financial education must be recognised as a key skill that sits alongside literacy and numeracy, as an examinable and standalone part of the curriculum. He added that until Government recognises this, ""the nation will continue to see financial illiteracy as the norm in our society

[kingmonkey]

Although this is very exciting, I would be hesitant to support or be appearing to support a particular party.

[MSE Martin]

Originally Posted by kingmonkey

Although this is very exciting, I would be hesitant to support or be appearing to support a particular party.

Hi In my public capacity, I support this policy and any party that supports it. As you'll see in my earlier polticial blog - im actually talking to all the major parties at the moment

Martin

[Kimitatsu]

I teach Financial Capability to adults (as well as being a debt adviser) and I wholeheartedly agree that this should be taught in schools, because by the time they get to be adults it is a taboo subject.

If children were taught early in school (and being honest year 5 - 6 in primary school would be a good place to start) then they would have a better understanding of the financial world when they hit the magic 18. Teaching children the basics of budgeting on a weekly basis and the basics of credit and debt would make a massive difference to them. Pfeg already publish a huge amount of material for schools to use, but although financial capability is on the curriculum it is only as an option not compulsory.

Its not just about teaching children in school though, its about making money and related financial services easy to talk about on a group basis and easy to access information about for everyone. I am a fairly well educated person, but I find that for many of the leaflets that are out there, and the financial services which are offered are difficult to access, especially if you do not have a good level of education (many of the people I work with have an average literacy age below that of secondary school and numeracy is very poor as well). When you can access them, its a question of knowing what to ask for, especially with govt depts! If you know WHAT to ask for, then you can have it, but if you dont ask then you cant There needs to be far more transparency in the help that is available and how it can be accessed.

The other disadvantage of teaching children and not adults is you get a generation gap and children will be discouraged from doing it differently - "because we have always done it this way before". If there was a way of accessing the whole family into this process that would be ideal, as different generations process information differently, it would also make the financial world a less daunting place for all of them! I see many parents who have a cognitive deficit and so would not like to admit that in front of a group, so we play games and use monopoly money to overcome this issue - expanded out to the family, it could be a way of including everyone and teaching them all at the same time. See a potential new game there??! Hamleys here I come lol!

The issue as always however is funding - my project is fortunate to have big lottery funding for the next couple of years, but is restrictive in the area that I can practice. There is a new funding initiative being piloted with the CAB "the pathway to independant advice" but this will only give free financial advice it will not cover the education aspect of it as it is based on the Thorenson report, and so users will be referred through to an IFA.

Ideally what we need is some "joined up thinking" for the whole sector involvement in this rather than indivual projects and govt funded projects which cover part of the picture rather than the whole.

Right stepping off my soapbox now and off to hang my anorak back up on the peg

[robbyj64]

We should be a little cautious about this becoming a political points scoring debate. Nobody disagrees that we should teach pupils to be financially astute but how to do this effectively is far more complex than providing a discrete lesson in 'financial management'. Maths, certainly is part of the equation (no pun intended) but there are many other areas of the curriculum that help students become financially savvy. Information technology, citizenship and maths play a big part in it. To pick up on Erichichmo's very valid point on ethics, geography has a big part to play as well. One of the every child matters outcomes is 'achieve economic well-being' so this is increasingly uppermost in the minds of all teachers, irrespective of their subject discipline. The new KS3 curriculum rightly is making links between areas of the curriculum so this should help schools improve financial education. The Ofsted framework for inspections tests the economic well being of pupils in secondary and primary schools. This already does far more than measure the ICT, maths and English capability of students. In fact, for schools to score highly in this, they should be demonstrating how they encourage ethical awareness of products, finance and how students are given opportunities to begin their own enterprises in schools.

Should the school curriculum be changed then? Absolutely not. The indicators are that things are already moving fast in this area. Adding another subject to the curriculum, particularly at secondary school level would fragment even further a curriculum that is just starting to come together. One major reason the curriculum was simplified this September was to break down these barriers, not create new ones and overload a curriculum that was already massively overloaded with content rather than building up skills.

I visit about 200 schools a year. Enterprise education has come on enormously over the past 5 years or so, particularly since 2005. The indicators are that this trend is set to increase.

[MSE Martin]

Roobyj64

Your reply is one of my main concerns to be honest. Whenever I talk about educating children about debt and financial issues one of the rebuttals is about "young entreprise" and "enterprise education".

I believe those are very important things to teach kids about. Yet they are NOT consumer education.

It doesn't teach kids that a credit card minimum repayment on £3,000 will mean they're in debt for 41 years at £6,300. IT doesn't teach them about comparing goods to find the best. It doesn't teach kids about compound interest, how student loans works, the rip offs of car insurance when they get their first car, how to work through mobile tariffs, what a mortgage is, why they should pay off debts before savings, how pensions work and why preplanning is important.

These are a seperate issue and subject... and for me crucial in our modern competition consumer and credit based economy.

Martin

[Kimitatsu]

Personally I think this should be a cross party initiative - I dont think there are any political parties that would disagree with the outcomes which would be achieved from this type of added subject to the curriculum.

I am conversant with the every child matters document but it does not take into account those children who do not engage well with "traditional" education. The business entereprise schemes you talk about are aimed at those who will already engage in these types of activities and will be able to extrapolate the experience out to help them in their daily lives.

How often do I talk about what an APR is only to hear "I always wondered what one of those was but didnt want to seem stupid if I asked" and yet it has a very real bearing on someone's financial understanding and economic wellbeing. Understanding that a doorstep loan company will charge you 185% APR that year has a huge impact on someone who is on benefits, and walking them through the scenario of being on £262 a month for a single person, and paying back £285 for a £100 loan is more than just a "discreet lesson in financial management".

I have two children one of primary school age and one of secondary school age. Neither of them have had any financial education though school, and the eldest is very much scientifically based so would be ideally suited to to that arena. Both have done the "running a company" project for a week in primary school, and yet neither of them relate it to how it could affect their lives. Testing a wants versus needs game that I devised for a module however stimulated huge discussions about what was important to people and how you could make savings to afford the things you needed.

In our household we term it under the heading of "life skills", that being something which everyone needs to understand but which is rarely taught in schools. So should the curriculum change? Absolutely! This should be embedded learning across the curriculum as important as any other basic skill and would hopefully identify those groups who would benefit from further links to the community such as credit unions.

[robbyj64]

All very true Martin and of course pupils should learn all those things you mention. We've all been to school and in a way, we all think we are experts in how the school day should be organised, politicians included. History tells us that when politicians intervene in education, chaos soon follows. Ruth Kelly's out of hand rejection of the Tomlinson report into 14-16 curricula still sticks in my throat.

In reality curriculum design is hugely complex and should be left to the experts. When it works well, pupils leave school with all the skills they need to get on in 21st century society, and that includes financial awareness. We could also make a strong case for religious tolerance and anti extremism to be taught in schools, which arguably is the biggest threat to society at the moment.

You'd have been delighted to see what I saw recently in a school maths lesson. Students had prepared a group presentation on 'credit cards, the good the bad and the ugly', complete with an Ennio Morricone soundtrack. Lots of the backdrops and illustrations were from the MSE website, with quotes such as 'Martin says...'. They then used this as coursework.

[MSE Martin]

Originally Posted by robbyj64

All very true Martin and of course pupils should learn all those things you mention. We've all been to school and in a way, we all think we are experts in how the school day should be organised, politicians included. History tells us that when politicians intervene in education, chaos soon follows. Ruth Kelly's out of hand rejection of the Tomlinson report into 14-16 curricula still sticks in my throat.

In reality curriculum design is hugely complex and should be left to the experts. When it works well, pupils leave school with all the skills they need to get on in 21st century society, and that includes financial awareness. We could also make a strong case for religious tolerance and anti extremism to be taught in schools, which arguably is the biggest threat to society at the moment.

You'd have been delighted to see what I saw recently in a school maths lesson. Students had prepared a group presentation on 'credit cards, the good the bad and the ugly', complete with an Ennio Morricone soundtrack. Lots of the backdrops and illustrations were from the MSE website, with quotes such as 'Martin says...'. They then used this as coursework.

I am indeed delighted to see that. Yet while this case sounds good, i presume thats a teacher being proactive - and I know there are many equally brilliant proactive people in education across the UK.

Yet I spoke in a school recently and asked teachers and pupils if they'd been given any info about financial education - and the answer was no. The same when I spoke at the LSE for new students, most had no consumer or personal finance education.

I think we're hung up on curriculum issues here. My point is there should be compulstory consumer finance education in schools; not necessarily that it should be done in the curriculum. For example in the fortnight after GCSEs when the pupils tend to be still at school but doing nothing. Why not take that time to teach them real world finance and student loans.

Martin

[BernardM]

Originally Posted by MSE Martin

Hi In my public capacity, I support this policy and any party that supports it. As you'll see in my earlier polticial blog - im actually talking to all the major parties at the moment

Martin

Hello Martin,
What did they have to say about the bank charges campaign.
You said you were disappointed with MPs over this, did any smaller political parties out there support it.