School Financial skills Quiz.

green_man

My 11 year old year 7 son came home with a financial quiz as part of their Life Skills education.

Now it’s great news that they are trying to teach this stuff in schools, as some of the misunderstandings of basic financial concepts in the general public is frightening at times.
However I have my concerns: This quiz was given to the whole school 11-16 year olds, my son looked at the first question and just said to me ‘no idea, we haven’t been taught this stuff’. So it just looks like they have thrown the quiz at everyone, when looking through the questions it seems more aimed at years 10-11 (14-16 year olds), so seems more a box ticking exercise than a genuine attempt to educate. Hopefully I am proved wrong and I see some good financial education being offered to him in the future.

An example question:
Which of the following typically carries the most risk: The shares of a single company; A mutual fund of dozens of different companies.

greatkingrat

Maybe they are just trying to get an idea of their existing knowledge so they can plan future lessons appropriately?

badger09

Maybe the teachers don't know the answers and are hoping there are some financially savvy 11 year olds in their class who do;)

coyrls

badger09 wrote: »

Maybe the teachers don't know the answers and are hoping there are some financially savvy 11 year olds in their class who do;)

Well they don't seem to realise that a US quiz ("mutual fund") may not be appropriate in the UK.

sorcerer

LOL, a "Mutual Fund", probably take of some school network in the US. :rotfl:

sevenhills

green_man wrote: »

My 11 year old year 7 son came home with a financial quiz as part of their Life Skills education.

my son looked at the first question and just said to me ‘no idea, we haven’t been taught this stuff’. So it just looks like they have thrown the quiz at everyone, when looking through the questions it seems more aimed at years 10-11 (14-16 year olds), so seems more a box ticking exercise than a genuine attempt to educate.

If your 11 year old did not know the answer, it is an ideal opportunity for him to learn the right answer.

green_man

sorcerer wrote: »

LOL, a "Mutual Fund", probably take of some school network in the US. :rotfl:

Indeed, one of the other questions was: what are the average University Tuition Fees at Universities in England. the ‘correct’ answer was £3000 which to me seems out of date by at least 5 years, the average now seemingly very near £9000. This implies that this quiz is a number of years old at least.

green_man

sevenhills wrote: »

If your 11 year old did not know the answer, it is an ideal opportunity for him to learn the right answer.

Yes he had ago himself and got 50%, we then went through it together and got them all right accept the above Uni Fees question. You were given a total of 3efforts to acheive the best score. In the last go I managed to ‘guess’ the correct answer to the above question so we got 100. It it wrong to appear proud to get 100% on a test intended for an 11 year old :j

eskbanker

green_man wrote: »

It it wrong to appear proud to get 100% on a test intended for an 11 year old :j

It's a damn sight higher than some on here would manage (no names....)!

Malthusian

I agree the way the question is phrased means it is more about getting the pupil to think about what the answer might be than testing how much the student already knows.

If you were testing how much the pupil knew about finance the question would be "Which is the most risky: 1) An individual share 2) A mutual fund", which would be impossible to answer (beyond a 50/50 guess) if you didn't know what a mutual fund is. By telling the pupil that a mutual fund owns dozens of different companies, an 11-year-old with no prior knowledge of the retail financial market might be able to take an educated guess.

Seems a reasonable enough exercise.

dale_cotterill

green_man wrote: »

An example question:
Which of the following typically carries the most risk: The shares of a single company; A mutual fund of dozens of different companies.

They've just bolted a load of questions from random past surveys together. This particular one was originally from the 2004 Health and Retirement study, remember listening to a podcast a while back about it.

Did they also have a couple on about compound interest and inflation?