To think we should teach kids about mortgages and pensions instead of making them do Maths till 18?

[malificent7]

Never have i had to work out the area of a triangle since school so why isn't Sunak proposing we teach kids proper life skills instead? My dad never taught me and would have been better placed lecturing me on mortgages than harping on about pythagoras ( again...never used).

I agree. I'm financially illiterate and am really quite ashamed. If my OH weren't here I would really struggle. I just find it all so fucking boring

Exactly.

Anyway.

My child is in year 4.

I'm practicing questions with her.

With Maths they always teach you something basic but then you have to learn to apply that knowledge.

So learning multiplication. 6x7. And cm/ metres
But then learning how to apply the knowledge.

So doing questions such as.

A half a metre length of cloth is cut up into 6cm pieces. How many cm are left.

If you can apply the knowledge that you learn then you should be able to work out more complicated functional maths.

E.g. the standing rate for electricity is 30p a day.

Each of Kw energy cost 5p.

How much would you expect your electricity costs to be after 5 days if no energy is used.

If you use 250kw energy a day. How much would electricity cost for 7 days. ( dont forget standing charge.)

If you have you put £10 on your prepayment meter which is already £4 in debt. After how many days can you expect to need to top your meter if you use 110kw of electricity a day.

Etc

The actual maths used isnt complicated, but the comprehension on what the question is asking and being able to apply that knowledge to everyday situation is what's important.

The actual maths needed is all learned in primary school.

I went to school abroad and studied many aspects of practical home finances in math lessons. Foreign exchange at 13-ish, mortgages at 14, stock investment returns at 15 and statistics 16 or 17. This was considered basic mandatory maths and there was optional advanced maths, too. I just don’t see why basic life examples like return to investment or comparing which is a better deal, variable or fixed rate in a particular situation, are not used as examples in math tasks, I certainly found it more interesting that way because I knew I’d need it and I wanted to be financially literate after growing up poor.

Of course that doesn’t mean that I’d remember any of the details, but when the time came to buy a house or invest, a lot of the stuff sounded familiar and I knew which points were important to pay attention to and do more digging.

I was listening to my colleague who said that her mortgage offer of paying “just £300/month” on a really high total mortgage sum sounded like a “really good deal” to her, because it was “less than paying more per month.” (She can afford both options.) I wanted to bang my face on the table, the concept of massive, huge compounding interest over decades which could be avoided by paying more per month was news to her.

Also my partner, who is a product of the British curriculum, is clueless with basics sometimes. I’m genuinely worried of putting my child through that same system.

History is poorly taught, too. Apparently it’s not even mandatory after the early teenage years? Some of the stuff taught to me at 17 was really gory but also essential to know. Again, partner is clueless despite receiving fairly good marks but apparently he just learnt about Vikings and castles…

Do people genuinely not understand this or do they just not care about kicking the can down the road?

Most people I know who do this I'd put in the "willfully ignorant" category. They understand it'll cost more, maybe they haven't done the maths to work out how much more (although you can normally find the "total" figure you'll pay back if you look, but that's because they've already decided they want to do whatever it is.

How to fill in HMRC tax returns using all current tax allowances and work out the tax owed.

@2bazookas given how much more complex the tax code has become since then, you'd have to devote half of your school career to it now. The Tolley's Yellow Tax Handbook is now 16,366 pages long over five volumes. The original edition (1965/66) was 759 pages in a single volume, with plenty of blank space.

"It is well enough that people do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe their would be a revolution before tomorrow morning" - Henry Ford.

I doubt it. People are very apathetic and also time-poor. The news is always full of how the government and businesses are screwing people over, how social media is cynically exploitating their attention and targeting them and nudging their behaviour. People say 'Meh' and carry on. No revolution.

As for teaching about mortgages and taxes etc, I agree with previous posters. The maths taught in school already should equip you to understand those things if you a) listened in the first place b) remember your maths beyond 5 years after leaving school and c) feel the need or have the motivation to actually look into mortgages and taxes and try to understand them. Big ifs. Kids always say they want to learn 'relevant' stuff. What they usually mean is fun stuff. Mortgages and taxes aren't fun.

I doubt that the PP would have been using Tolley’s in bottom set O level maths in 1981!! More likely they were given the exemptions, limits and rates and were asked to calculate the income tax owed by an individual with simple tax affairs.

Judging from the number of sad faces in the Daily Rage over interest only mortgages completing their term I think it is genuine idiocy.

If only. No, the posts are always, “how can I afford my dream home?” or “would it be sensible to stretch myself by borrowing the absolute maximum through a specialist broker?”. They haven’t a notion.

GCSE Maths already covers percentages and compound interest which is everything you need to know about how a mortgage works.

I’m flabbergasted that anyone believes the sad faces though. It beggars belief that they did not understand that an interest only mortgage meant you are paying only the interest and nothing towards the debt itself.

I’m going to be mean here, but how can anyone not diagnosed with a severe LD or low IQ not get it?! I think they got it and are now trying to fraudulently claim they were mis-sold the mortgage to get a big payout and go laughing all the way to the bank.

What's more scary is that these people actually bid up prices. Because it is on IO, they can afford to bid more. Which means someone who is more prudent is priced out.

Then if the ones who went on IO pull the sad face when it comes to term and get bailed out ...

Some people call it moral hazard. Once your financial system starts to reward this sort of behaviour a few years down the line everyone is going to be screwed.

Why does everyone assume that a 16-18 maths curriculum would be deeply theoretical/academic, rather than actually looking at countries where maths is compulsory until 18?

For example, the Essential Maths curriculum in Australia:
Essential Mathematics focuses on using mathematics effectively, efficiently and critically to make informed decisions. It provides students with the mathematical knowledge, skills and understanding to solve problems in real contexts for a range of workplace, personal, further learning and community settings. This subject provides the opportunity for students to prepare for post-school options of employment and further training.

Anyone who finds themselves in that situation and takes their outrage to the daily fail instead of being embarrassed by their ignorance is probably the type of person you can't teach this stuff to anyway. So it's irrelevant if they're taught it in school or not, I can't imagine they'd have listened!

I have some sympathy with people who don't understand the basics of how mortgages work and therefore don't get one because they don't know about them or misunderstand something about them, that's one thing.

If you take out a mortgage and don't make sure you read and understand the T&Cs then you're a fucking idiot and a teacher having explained it to you decades before won't help you.

The knowledge is there people just need to apply that knowledge.

The knowledge gap for functional questions often isn’t maths it is literacy / comprehension.

it is no good just teaching kids how things work currently they need the skills to find, understand and apply information in the future. That isn’t just or only maths.

I think maths should teach principles which can then be applied to real life situations. As far as I can tell - and I haven't studied the syllabus in detail, it's pretty good at doing that.

Young people should be taught the importance of financial planning, including planning for their pension, which I assume they are in PSHE.

But there is no point at all in teaching the finer details of how pensions, mortgages and tax work because things will change before people have a chance to use them. As an example, it is now paid off but I used to have an endowment mortgage. They hadn't been invented when I was at school. It's a pity they ever were, but that's another story! And of course tax rules change all the time.

Why the aversion to a society with mathematical literacy?

financial literacy is also a good idea, We actually did a fairly good course on that in my country when I was a child and my child got the same. It is done at age 11 because the topic is relatively simple. She did find learning to write a check very antiquated.

one complication of lessons coming from the school is sensitivity to different financial situations. With my dd, our school went out of their way to try to be neutral with regards to budgeting and use of credit and asked parents to talk to the children at home instead. I don’t think that served children well. Everyone needs lessons in responsible use of credit and careful budgeting, even If they don’t have parents who are in a position to teach those lessons.

I would certainly be in favour of ‘Life Skills’ classes. Or maybe call them ‘Life Philosophy’ classes. We could easily chop geography, for example. Subjects like physics are also wasted on kids who don’t have that sort of mind (like me).

Alain de Botton has set up the brilliant ‘School of Life’, which takes the great works of literature and philosophy and applies them to ordinary living. It’s such a good idea. Children ought to be taught how to navigate sex, pornography, relationships, work, money, debt, depression, loneliness, bereavement, etc. They should be taught how to process and manage their emotions, how to cope with trauma, and how to support others through such things.

And they should be taught what it means to live in a society - how we depend on each other, how our actions have consequences. Things that seem like victimless crimes often aren’t. If they cheat the benefit system, for example, others have to pick up the slack - they have to work harder and pay more tax. It also means there is less money to repair the roads, fix the streetlights, buy the latest cancer drugs. When they buy cocaine, it fuels crime and violence. When they cheat an insurance company, other people’s insurance payments go up. Children need this kind of thing explained to them (so do some adults!).

I’d much rather they were taught introductory finance and business management (bit of marketing, sales, customer service, etc.) than Shakespeare. The only thing school taught Shakespeare gives pupils is a loathing of Shakespeare. I’m not saying they shouldn’t know about him, but take them to plays or have them do performances as enrichment activities. Getting pupils life ready and work ready is far more important than who snogged Bottom.

We do teach this, we've had banks in to do specialist sessions on it - the kids couldn't care less, it feels a million miles away for them. I'm sure looking back it might seems like a good idea but the reality is no 16 year old gives a crap about their pension.

Maths teaches the skills required to understand finances and financial products. Granted not complex algebra or trigonometry but having good understanding of numbers, calculations and how to read and interpret data is very useful in lots of situations. Financial literacy is also important but it is probably something that needs to be covered in form and PHSE lessons. For most teens it probably doesn't have much relevance until they leave home so might be more appropriate in Y13 before many go to uni and have to deal with student loans, rentals etc

If you take out a mortgage and don't make sure you read and understand the T&Cs then you're a fucking idiot and a teacher having explained it to you decades before won't help you.

I agree. If you sign a mortgage agreement you need to make sure you thoroughly understand what you're agreeing to. It's really not complicated!!

And it's certainly not something school kids are interested in.

It is almost as though the state want kids to be ignorant - and, therefore, susceptible to their games and those of their donors.

In fact, write down what you think are the most important (say) 20 skills in life. Then tick the ones that are taught in school. Got lots of ticks? I didn't.