MSE News: Small step towards financial education in schools

FATBALLZ

bylromarha wrote: »

For goodness sake...teachers have been doing this since day 1 of school...government are trying to convince you it's a step forward when it's already happening everywhere.

If parents would take their children out to the shop, put a coin or 2 in their hands and let them look at the change they get, then we would be far further on.

How sad is it that I had to give my year 1 class of 5 and 6 year olds homework where they had to find something in a shop to buy for 20p or 50p, record the price and record the change given in coins. About 60% of the kids never did the homework, 30% of kids reported how excited they were as they held their own 50p and participated in a transaction. It was only 10% who had already bought something in a shop.

It is not a schools job to teach everything a parent should have taught. In my classroom, I can't give weekly exposure to buying something in a shop and getting change - parents can and are best placed to. They can take time to look at the coins, predict the change, look at the coins that make the change... but some parents choose not to and the more the government put these home skills into the school curriculum, the less some parents will feel they have to do at home as "that's school's job".

Eagerly awaiting the day when the school curriculum contains things like potty training, how to eat with a knife and fork and how to dress.

While what you've mentioned is all well and good, the problem seems to be more that there is no further detail than "if you have 50p, you can buy x,y and z". I might be wrong, but it seems to me the problem arises when people are told by the bank "we can give you many 50ps, and you'll only need to repay 1p a month for each one you spend". Then people just see it as all the stuff they can buy now, and go on a spending spree.

Education might have changed since I went to school (which isn't all that long ago), but I don't think the complications and long term impacts of these kinds of transactions are explained anywhere.

Dorastar

But that is the problem - children don't actually use money anymore and some of them rarely see it at all. Parents use cashcards or visa to pay for everything, children don't get to buy anything with real cash (not many places still sell sweets for less than 10p) and they can't understand the amounts. You've only got to watch children in school at the healthy tuck shop handing over a handful of coins in the hope that it will add up to the cost of their toast/banana/yoghurt or whatever - a lot of them have no idea.

Before we start educating them about credit and repayments we need to get the basics sorted and that has to start with parents.