We need your thoughts on Finance lessons being dropped from Schools Bill

[CatherineHMumsnet]

There is another thread debating sex education and home schooling elements of the PSHE being dropped from the Schools Bill here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/politics/942891-Fear-for-your-children-39-s-education-under-the-Tories but we had an interesting email in from finance expert Martin Lewis pointing out that the removal of PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education)from the Schools Bill also means that compulsory financial education has been dropped too.

What do you reckon? Do you agree as Lewis puts it: 'We're a nation that educates our youth into debt when they go to university, but never educates them about debt.'

I had PSE at school which was the annual "period talk" and a general piss abot. We learnt NOTHING useful and that was only 12(?) years ago that i left!

We should be teaching basics like boiling eggs, making spag bol, washing instructions, and how to pay stuff - and consequences if we don't and how to get out of the shit money wise.

Well, we home ed - but if we did use school I would be unsure about the content and quality of compulsory financial education.

My concern about making things like this a requirement is that just covering the topics doesn't necessarily mean that they are covered well.

I don't think there is any substitute for experience in these types of things and I love the schemes that operate a bank through the school and other things like that.

I object to the idea that we need to legislate for everything as well, schools can provide financial education without there being a law to say they must or that parents shouldn't be able to opt out if they prefer to retain full responsibility for that aspect of their child's education themselves.

Alot of adults in this country don't know what a APR is and have no idea how to calculate how much interest they are paying on something, it's better to educate everyone on money management (particularly the bankers who clearly have no idea). The best way to start is in the schools so the children can go home and talk to their parents about it. We live in a 'buy it now' culture rather then a 'save up for it' culture, consumerism should be the name of our country.

How about parents teaching these things to their children?

We didn't have PSHEE when I was at school in the 80s, but we learnt many of the aspects in other lessons.

Debt is not really rocket science, is it? If you spend more than you earn, you go into debt. When I was at school, we learnt how to calculate compound interest, and about negative numbers. That's about all you need to know about debt.

There is nothing stopping parents from discussing the issue when they are having family meals together.

With my lack of debt education, I had £100 of bank overdraught on graduation day and this was paid off within a month. That's because I worked for my money, and didn't spend my afternoons in the local Costa coffee bar sipping £4 coffees (or the 80s equivalent).

Maybe it needs to be part of the compulsory maths curriculum, not PSHCE. If there was a section on it in the Maths GCSE schools would have to take it seriously and deliver it well and the students would actually learn something.

FLF,

I am pretty sure that it is still in the Mathematics curriculum, and at least there, students get practice in doing the calculations.

Sadly, not all teachers are particularly confident with numbers themselves, so it is a bit of a stretch to think that all form tutors (typical deliverers of the PSHEE curriculum) can teach this to the necessary standard.

I think it is a lot more important to teach the children a work ethic - if you want something, you work for it first.

I think it is important to wrest finance education from the hands of the banks, who often visit schools under the guise of educating children- in actual fact they are touting for business. It's a disgusting practice which I would like to see stopped. many schools are/were drafting in bank representatives in order to fulfill this curriculum requirement.

Most 16 yr olds at my school have no idea what an overdraft is, nor what a flat may cost to rent, or what they may expect to take home from their first months' pay. Ironically, they are very cash-savvy but have not grasp of financial issues.

Economic well-being is part of ECM, so I would be very surprised if it were not made part of the compulsory curriculum in another guise.

*not=no

all i leaned about life i learned from reading cathy and claire in Jackie

In France, the reformed lycée programme that will start in September 2010 is introducing compulsory economics lessons for all pupils aged 15. I greatly support this. An understanding of economics and finance is absolutely critical for life in the modern world (a lot more critical than an understanding of Latin) and I think that the way of the world is to make economics & finance mainstream subjects like history and geography.

There is nothing stopping parents from discussing the issue when they are having family meals together.

Other than that a lot of families don't eat together and the parents may not be competent to give good advice.

A few well-thought out finance lessons seems to be entirely sensible; it should be included in the national curriculum to ensure they are well-thought out.

I think it is hugely important to teach children good financial sense and awareness. It should be a combination of school and parents.

However, with the high levels of personal debt and finacial crisis in this country I'm not sure that enough adults are savvy enough to be able to teach their children effectively.

For example, I was homeless when I was 15, living in a bedsit by the time I was 16 and had to manage bills etc. Unfortunately no one taught me, there was no internet then, my only information source was my bank.
I ened up in dire straits and it's only really since my early twenties that I have learnt how banks etc make their money, what constitutes "good" and "bad" debt, how to budget properly and what is really a good deal.

My partner had two parents at home who spent every penny they earnt every week on shite, he is utterly awful with money. He has no idea how to shop around for a good bank account,he can't manage credit properly.

Many of my friends have high personal debt, no savings, cars on hp etc.

It seems to be more and more common for people to use credit as a lifestyle necessity rather than save for things.

The "I want it now" generation is here in force and unless we can convince our children that this should not be the norm then they will carry on making exactly the same mistakes that we are.

I was being tongue and cheek about family meals. We do live in Broken Britain after all.

Why is being removed from the Bill then? It's really weird given the state of UK finances. It seems silly not to include it, though I agree that having something on the curriculum doesn't mean it'll be taught well (but that's a whole other thread isn't it!).

There's so many things that, in an ideal world, would be talked about by parents - money, sex, healthy eating... it's all very well to say the parents should do this, and it's true, but this is the real world and it's not going to happen in every home.

I think that it's the buy-it-now, consumerism-ridden culture that we need to be educated out of. All of us, not just the kids! Nobody needs to take out a loan to get a 50-inch plasma telly, and usually nobody needs to change their car/mobile/laptop every year for the latest model. But it's expected of us in order to keep up with the Joneses. It's seen as normal to get things 'on tick' - you're seen as a weirdo if you save up for things and only buy what you can afford.

Incidentally I did my English GCSE in 2004 as a 'mature student' (actually I was 17!) - the topic was money, I remember wondering why on earth that was only on the mature syllabus?!

This is taught to a certain extent in Year 9 through something called the Real Game that looks at the world of work and budgeting.

You have to aim this one carefully (finance lessons I mean). I taught the same lessons (not the Real Game but off timetable lessons o this) to year 10s and 11s. The year 11s were more interested. The resources we were given were awful, so I asked what the kids were interested in; did they know how to budget? did they know how to read a pay statement?; were they aware of different tariffs for utilities?; how much would they pay in CTAX? what did they know about overdrafts?

We covered all of this, and I rammed home the importance of a pension as well. I showed them my payslip and explained about tax and NI. I explained mortgages, interest only and repayment, and was honest with them about some of the pratfalls I have had. I also explained in minute detail how much a child costs.

They listened because I was the same age as, or older than, their Mums, and I'd had LBT (life before teaching).

It was interesting what they did and didn't know.

"We should be teaching basics like boiling eggs, making spag bol, washing instructions, and how to pay stuff - and consequences if we don't and how to get out of the shit money wise. "

that's a parents job

educate the parents ffs. i keep banging and banging on about this - but it is WRONG WRONG WRONG to parent by proxy through schools.

please keep schools the institutions which teach our children traditional academic subjects.

if we are a society which needs to parent via ourschool system there is something seriously wrong with it.

universal parenting classes on reciept of child benefit is the way to go.

to many children leave the school system without even the basic skill to read more than a page or simple maths.

make all our children, children who have basic numeracy and literacy before they leave the school system and leave the bloody teachers alone and let them get on with it.

stop wasting public money on this kind of farce and direct more into the education system.

universal parenting classes on reciept of child benefit is the way to go.

oh yes, there's such concensus on the correct way to parent that setting the curriculum for that would be a doddle.

A handful of finance lessons, however well delivered, will not make a blind bit of difference anyway. All the sex-ed in the world doesn't seem to make much difference to the teen pregnancy rates, nor do the lessons on drink and drugs stop the kids doing them every weekend.

We need to stop people getting into vast amounts of debt in the first place. A good start would be for legislation to make it much, much tougher to get a credit card / store card or HP in the first place.

I agree with Custardo. The parents should teach this. Teachers and schools are being expected to do waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much these days, and then get a bollocking for doing it.

Teachers should not be expected to teach children about how to become responsible adults; their parents should do that.

Loving all the smug talk of "the parents should do that"!. as if most of british parents are in a position to teach financial management to their offspring

and no i am not just talking of the less educated, less wealthy families but of the debt-bingeing middle class who mortgaged through the hilt during the last 10 years (and then blamed the banks for lending all the money and ending up in the mess we are now). In fact, i believe research has shown that poorer households are on balance much better at managing money than wealthier ones.

Financially capable citizens are a fundamental pillar of a well fucntioning financial system, and, by consequence, of a well fucntioning economy and society.

what happened to the national strategy for financial capability, anyway?

OF COURSE, 90% of financial management boils down to being able to do some basic maths, so that should be the priority....

I agree - leave the schools alone. Let's run a mile from this nanny state.

I used to facilitate parenting classes when I was a SAHM, and the agenda was never to impose on set of rules on the new parents. It was all about informed choice.

Completely agree with Martin Lewis on this and have thought for a long time that it needs to be something that is taught in schools.

blimey i had no idea that financial lessons were in the curriculum in the first place.

is there any evidence that children who have had financial lessons at school retain and apply any of the information?