How well do you think financial education is taught in schools?

missbiggles1

There's plenty of sex education in school but we still have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe!

If students don't understand a basic concept like percentages (which definitely is taught) then personal finance will go over their heads as well as thinking it to be irrelevant to them.

Pollycat

missbiggles1 wrote: »

There's plenty of sex education in school but we still have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe!

If students don't understand a basic concept like percentages (which definitely is taught) then personal finance will go over their heads as well as thinking it to be irrelevant to them.

Especially as a lot of young adults rely on the Bank of Mum & Dad to rescue them from the financial messes they get themselves in.

Kim_13

Badly. I refer to the sessions about going to university. We were led to believe that student loan repayments were 9% of gross salary above the threshold, not net (as is the case.) We were also told that interest was linked to inflation in the year of graduation, not every year. Quite a large difference in the amount payable over the lifetime of the loan.

I left school knowing more about money in general than most people, but that was because I took Business Studies and Economics (as separate subjects; something not encouraged in most schools as far as I'm aware.) This was in the days of coursework where we had to write business plans, research costs etc. Perhaps now that it's all been removed (I believe) Business won't be as useful. That said, interest rates especially could have been covered more/better. One of the most important parts of the subject for real life use, and there was an essay question on them in both the GCSE and AS Level exam paper. It was something that no one expected to come up in as much detail as it did. We were blagging a lot of the answer (or in my case the second time around, using AS Economics to answer the AS Business paper!)

General Studies was a pointless exam and the lessons for it could be replaced with Financial Education, however it would likely take extra training (see above information we were given about student finance!) unless Business Studies teachers are able to take the class maybe. However, as some have said, it's not something a lot of teenagers take an interest in and might be as often skived as General Studies. Attendance of that was quite poor and this was back when EMA was paid (meaning that some must have turned up because they knew they'd get no money if they didn't!) I can imagine such a lesson would only fare worse now. It doesn't solve the problem in lower school, but it would free up some time at least at 16+ and the rising school leaving age should mean that more people have more guidance in this area.

Having opted for financial subjects, I would say that Economics is more useful, but unfortunately Business Studies is more widely available (and prone to a number of students who go on to disrupt the lesson, due to having little interest in school and choosing it because it's a new subject and/or a perceived easy option.) We perhaps ended up covering areas less thoroughly than we could have done due to this.

With Business Studies, it would be good if as well as cash flow, profit and loss projections and balance sheets, tax returns could be slotted into the syllabus somewhere.

As with anything, there's only so much that can be learned from theory/the classroom and experience is important. I think that schools need to make the effort/time though, as how much children's parents know/understand to pass on will vary a lot. Some parents are also more inclined to do this than others. It'd be good if parents who simply didn't try could face sanctions in some way, but I don't know how it could ever be policed/enforced.

MortgageVirgin

I don't know enough about the KS3/4 curriculum to comment on what secondary schools should be covering. I would imagine that some element of budgeting/ money sense is covered, perhaps alongside a Young Enterprise scheme.

However, in a curriculum already overcrowded, with changing goalposts and ever-increasing targets for attainment, it may not be given the time or resources we all would like. Where is the parental responsibility? The majority of responders on their thread have just talked about schools, not about parents demonstrating and teaching their children how to look after their financial health.

As a teacher, this is one of my biggest frustrations. We cannot, and should not, be the sole 'educators' for the young people in our classes.

Kim_13

The Young Enterprise scheme is a good idea, however the scheme might lose some of its benefit if a mass of students from a particular school are taking part. When I did it, it involved travelling to various events and with already tight budgets to meet, it might not be financially viable to take large groups of students (we were taken in the school minibus by one of the teachers.) Unless schools were to devise their own internal YE scheme.

It's always going to be difficult to find the time in the day for it. In my school, Young Enterprise was done instead of PE for those that chose it, which meant it had to be offered only to the sixth form (due to the PE hours being a requirement of the curriculum in lower school.) I can't see there ever being any flexibility to trade PE for Financial Education in KS3/4, with the obesity stats we get these days.

K.deales

I'm a youth worker and have worked with lots of children and young people. In some cases they didn't even know what coins were what never mind how much things cost or how bank accounts etc work. It might be because people pay with cards more now and it's not tangible money. In my opinion it would be a great experience for children and especially young people to run a fictional household as mentioned in a previous post - This may be something we do in our youth club.

Elsewhere

When I started school back in the 1950s I remember in our reception class there was a Wendy house set up as a little shop and we used to use cardboard coins to buy stuff and the child who was shopkeeper had to give change - this was in the days of £sd, of course.

There was also a tuck shop at school where we could spend our pocket money.

Suely little things like that teach children right from the start that they need to think about what they spend?

I suppose the other financially related thing that luckily stuck with me from school was the difference between simple and compound interest. Maybe kids aren't taught that now?

Pollycat

MortgageVirgin wrote: »

However, in a curriculum already overcrowded, with changing goalposts and ever-increasing targets for attainment, it may not be given the time or resources we all would like. Where is the parental responsibility? The majority of responders on their thread have just talked about schools, not about parents demonstrating and teaching their children how to look after their financial health.

As a teacher, this is one of my biggest frustrations. We cannot, and should not, be the sole 'educators' for the young people in our classes.

A lot of adults are clueless about money, budgets, how credit cards work etc.
My friend's younger sister has no idea how to live within a budget - and she has children who she should be passing on good money management to.
She has been bailed out several times by her parents. Heaven knows who's going to do the same for her own kids.

Madmel

The teaching of Financial Education should be delivered through the PSHE system, but as with many aspects of school life, varies enormously between schools. In my own school, we have whole days devoted to Financial Education, which the kids enjoy as they work in "Apprentice"-style teams against one another. More in-depth work goes on in the 6th form which ties in with student finance sessions (most of our students stay on into 6th form).

However, people here need to remember that PSHE is delivered largely by non-specialists. Yesterday I led a session on Human Resources within the workplace and how they go together with employee and employer rights and responsibilities. My degree is in Music, but I have worked in industry and commerce before going into teaching, so I am quite happy doing this. This is not always the case, and as others have said, some people on here do ask naive questions. These same people may well be teaching teenagers, yet they know very little. Somehow we need to break the cycle of kids either not being taught at all or being taught by people who through no fault of the own, have very little expense or expertise in the subject.

If some of my students are really interested, I send them in the direction of this site, and also the 2 OU courses I did on Personal Finance and Investment as I found those really helpful.

Romanwall

My department was part of a study back in 2008 conducted by Ofsted. We taught 3 levels of financial education assessed by the ‘ifs’.
I attended the subsequent conference in London where the three main contenders argued that financial education should either be delivered through, PSHE, part of the mathematics curriculum, or taught on a separate certificated course that had equivalency with GCSE and A level.
I was (and still am) in the third camp because the other two could not adequately cover the psychological and financial changes during an individual’s lifespan.
General points highlighted during the day:
1. The prime focus was on schools.
2. A consensus that financial capability should be a statutory part of the curriculum.
3. Programmes should be coherent, with definitive outcomes, assessed and monitored.
4. Involve diverse and cultural information.
5. Educating students through PSHE and Mathematics flawed.

To conclude, Ofsted recommended that schools and colleges should:
Ensure sufficient priority is given to developing a coherent programme of personal finance education in the curriculum
Ensure teachers involved in personal finance education are confident in the knowledge and have the appropriate classroom skills to teach it
Developed systems to monitor and evaluate the progress of students are making towards achieving the learning outcomes for personal finance education
Improve the teaching of personal finance education so that young people from all backgrounds can access Financial Services and manage their money effectively.