To think schools should have a class to teach basic life skills

[beesandstrawberries]

We all learned so much in school that we haven’t used in day to day life - I mean when have we ever touched a Bunsen burner since school? But none of us was learned the basics of life and how to navigate it - things like:

• Showing how to do basic meals, cooking pasta safety, use of kitchen appliances correctly
• paying bills
• what a mortgage is, how to deal with contracts and paperwork
• how to meter readings
• change a lightbulb, basic tool use in the home
• how to check fire alarms
• credit card education
• managing money, spreadsheets to manage them
• insurances like life insurance and what ones you need
• education on abusive relationship signs
• things like peer pressure
• how to write formal letters/emails

I think we learn so many things that mean nothing when we leave school. If you teach kids basic life skills from a young age, it would make kids a lot more well rounded and less anxious in the ‘real world’ when it comes to managing money and not getting in debt. Even learning things like the warning signs of abusive relationships to young and impressionable teens as I think if I heard the signs then, I would have know what to look out for to prevent myself from getting in one as an adult.

I remember being in the real world and not knowing how to have good money management and I’m 28 and have no idea how to change a lightbulb. Even education for kids to learn about their bodies, that their outie bellybutton is normal and so are their stretch marks - so they don’t go into adulthood thinking their bodies are imperfect.

Children deserve more than Shakespeare or how to play football in pe. They deserve a kick start to life

Also almost 70, but I didn't learn anything useful like that at school.

Weirdly, we were taught how to wire a plug though, a skill which is now utterly redundant.

I also remember learning about finance in school and discussing credit cards but I know that a lot of people will forget that it was covered.

We didn't learn it as a standalone thing, but when we did percentages in maths we had a couple of exercises that included compound interest calculations. I remember one was about a mortgage - what was better: £X at 8% over Y years or the same amount at 10% over Z years.

Credit cards were still very new in the UK when I started secondary school though.

I think schools used to anyway, but in PSHE I've repeatedly taught about relationships/signs of abuse, managing finances, spotting online scams, peer pressure.

When I was in school, we got taught how to write formal letters in English language, and had DT classes on cooking. Every school I've worked in has food tech classes at some point.

It's tough because as a parent, I would assume it was my responsibility to teach my child life skills. That said, not all parents will and if primary schools are having to give lessons on brushing teeth properly (and some students coming to secondary functionally illiterate), not everyone is getting the right support from their parents.

And as a teacher, we're chronically underfunded and not enough time in the curriculum as it is. I don't think it's necessarily the right move to cut back time from core (or options) subjects - what about all the future doctors, scientists, engineers that need to have had a good grounding in science GCSE to progress? And for everyone to have a basic understanding of scientific principles before they go out into the world.

Could be a cheaper option to publish a "checklist" of functional skills children need to have been taught at home by a certain age to prompt parents, though such a thing already probably exists - and it could well come off as patronising to everyone who's doing it automatically

My mother had very firm views that school was not the place to learn things like cookery or sewing. She didn't stop me doing lessons, but I'm not sure what her response would have been if i had wanted to do food tech at GCSE.

To be fair, I did learn a lot about cooking from her, but I did learn some other things from school, too (not that I dared tell her.) She taught me to thread up a seeing machine and check the tension; school taught me there are different types of seams. And plenty of homes don't have a sewing machine at all (very possibly schools don't either these days, I don't know.) I also learnt how to do lots of gardening and DIY stuff at home, but I grew up on a farm, and had access to a full range of tools and a workshop and people to show me how to use them, which again, many people wouldn't have.

It's not a bad idea but would require a substantial re-write of the curriculum. That is a massive undertaking and you would.need to also decide what would be removed from the curriculum to add the new stuff in. I'm just not sure now is the time to make that substantial demand on our education system when most new teachers leave the profession in the first 5 years.

I think parents should teach them those life skills

I was brought up by grandparents who rented a council house, financially they lived by earnings minus costs, any remaining put aside in a savings account. Never bought anything unless they had hard cash in hand. Rent man came round Monday morning. Insurance man once a month on Thursday. Electric bill, in the shop on a Saturday quarterly. So I wouldn't have learnt anything about mortgages or credit at home. They always talked about their state pension and that they 'paid in the pot', no private pensions. As a young adult there was Gordon Browns 'raid on pensions' which I had no understanding of, but knew that people said they lost their pension, so private pensions to me were not worth it.
I remember in a lesson at school the class being asked what interest rates were,I shot my hand up, ' the level that I need to know more about something' Everyone pissed themselves laughing. I had absolutely no idea it was anything else.
As a young woman, I had absolutely no financial awareness and did get into a mess financially. Now im older, I'm more clued up but will never have a decent pension as that bypassed me when I was young.
I can check things out on the Internet now, that wasnt around when I was young, you had to actually know what you needed to know.