MSE News: Financial education in schools would have helped us, Britons say

Former_MSE_Helen · 5 March 2013 at 4:28PM

"More than half of people believe being taught money education in school would have improved their financial knowledge..."

Read the full story:

Financial education in schools would have helped us, Britons say

Click reply below to discuss. If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply. If you aren’t sure how it all works, read our New to Forum? Intro Guide.

MacMickster · 5 March 2013 at 6:37PM

For those without a decent standard of ability in mathematics, financial education will have little benefit. The 50% of the population who are worst at maths are probably the same 50% who wish they had been educated about money.

Improving maths skills is far more important than telling schoolchildren what APR and AER mean.

Chomeur · 5 March 2013 at 6:45PM

MacMickster wrote: »

For those without a decent standard of ability in mathematics, financial education will have little benefit. The 50% of the population who are worst at maths are probably the same 50% who wish they had been educated about money.

Improving maths skills is far more important than telling schoolchildren what APR and AER mean.

Agreed. All you need to be able to look after your personal finances is the ability to read and write and basic arithmetic. If you didn't pay attention when being taught that then there's little chance you would have paid attention when being taught about mortgages.

Murphybear · 5 March 2013 at 6:57PM

I agree to a certain point. Our children are coming out of schools without much maths or English knowledge.

Financial education isn't just about arithmetic though, they need to understand basic things such as if you have a credit card or loan it isn't 'free' money and must be paid back.

If the statistics you read about are correct then many children are going straight from school onto unemployment/other benefits. Surely they should leave school with some understanding of what this means?

egyptiangirl · 5 March 2013 at 7:51PM

I am a teacher.

I consistently repeat things to students throughout their time with us. All schools I've taught in in the past 10 years have taught this. It is nothing new.

However, until a child becomes an adult and realises what this all means most of them don't give a damn. All they see is 'free money' from a credit card. They don't remember me telling them what APR means!

As with many things, if the parents aren't doing as we preach, what's the point? If mummy and daddy buy them everything they want, possibly on credit, what sort of lesson is that?

Teachers try very hard to educate kids in this. Maybe instead of campaigning on this you should campaign to Mr Gove to revise his views on GCSE results and we might have the time to release financially literate children into this country's economy instead of teaching them Trigonometry and Pythagoras?

Caddyman · 5 March 2013 at 9:01PM

I've posted this before in a previous thread about financial education for kids.

Back in 1982, I and ten of my peers, were taken out of mainstream maths at my Secondary Modern School because we just couldn't grasp things like tangents/cosines/logarithms and the like. We were put on a pilot 'Money Management' course to take us to the end of our education (I left school in '84 at 16). Our Maths teacher was a fantastic bloke who promised that when we left school, we would be able to manage our finances and it would be far more 'useful' to us than what we would have learned. He was truly right. I've had a great career, I have zero debt and a decent roof over my head, all down to solid financial education, a lot of hard work, oh, and by not having any children!

bylromarha · 5 March 2013 at 10:04PM

I teach too.

Personal responsibility/mum/understanding of basic maths is what I had.

The only debts I had through life are my student loan (all paid now) and mortgage. Worked out long before MSE started that stoozing was a good way of making money-mid 90s I took out my full student loan each year to bung into a high interest account. Then took full advantage of my 0% overdraft facility for the same purpose.

Schools have been teaching basic financial education to a greater or lesser degree in maths and PSE - but the UK blame culture finds it much easier to point the finger elsewhere rather than back at the person who actually signed the loan, or wanted the must have TV.

I wonder what situation the UK will be like in 15 years time? When financial education has been taught for a number of years and the country is (hopefully) feeling a bit more financially fluid? I'm not sure the debt situation will be that much different - hope I'm wrong, but school is not the place these lessons are taught.

Nada666 · 5 March 2013 at 10:47PM

Perhaps MSE towers should start with their own reporters - and stop them from publishing stupid scare stories about increases in profits when they are accompanied by a pro rata increase in sales.

Credit-Crunched · 5 March 2013 at 11:04PM

egyptiangirl wrote: »

I am a teacher.

........... results and we might have the time to release financially literate children into this country's economy instead of teaching them Trigonometry and Pythagoras?

What a scary statement from a teacher, heaven forbid that you teach children such useless mathematical knowledge such as trigonometry and Pythagoras, what use do they have in the real world?

Whilst you are at it, why not ditch algebra....

These are the basics needed to understand maths and its real life applications.

This mentality is the reason why we are lagging behind the world in numeracy and on a larger scale engineering and technology.

Please re visit your slightly odd views towards the essential maths foundations and try to teach with a more open mind.

jgriggle · 6 March 2013 at 10:58AM

I think it rather suits the powers that be and their business buddies to have a bunch of financially illiterate youngsters leaving school, ready to be moulded into good little consumers...

Derivative · 6 March 2013 at 12:43PM

Credit-Crunched wrote: »

What a scary statement from a teacher, heaven forbid that you teach children such useless mathematical knowledge such as trigonometry and Pythagoras, what use do they have in the real world?

Whilst you are at it, why not ditch algebra....

These are the basics needed to understand maths and its real life applications.

This mentality is the reason why we are lagging behind the world in numeracy and on a larger scale engineering and technology.

Please re visit your slightly odd views towards the essential maths foundations and try to teach with a more open mind.

I think you've missed the point somewhat.

I am a Physics undergraduate and use trigonometry and algebra enough that I consider it more natural than speaking English.
It is certainly important. (Trigonometry less so than algebra - algebra is required for trig).

However, everyone of sound mind will have to manage a budget at some point in their lives.
If we're optimistic, less than half will ever encounter the cosine rule.
To be frank - it's likely even I'll never see it again given the career path I'd like to follow.

Given limited teaching time, something has to give.

MSE News: Financial education in schools would have helped us, Britons say

Comments

Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

🚀 Getting Started

Categories

Is this how you want to be seen?

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free