Financial education - MPs call for action on training

These are among the findings of a survey of teachers carried out for a parliamentary inquiry into the barriers facing schools in delivering financial education. The inquiry, carried out by the cross-party All Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Education for Young People, resulted in a report published this week.

The report calls for the Government to improve the availability of financial education training and to aim for all school age children in the UK to receive financial education by 2030.

The survey also found that:

• More than half of teachers currently delivering financial education find it challenging.
• Making the subject feel relevant while being sensitive to differences in individual circumstances is reported as a challenge.
• Around two in five teachers in schools where financial education is a curriculum requirement (secondary schools across the UK and primary schools outside England) do not appear to know this.

23 per cent of teachers surveyed said using third parties that can support financial education delivery within school was an important factor in delivering high quality financial education, though this is well behind the top factors, which include engagement from pupils (39 per cent) and access to high quality financial education lesson resources (38 per cent).

Recommendations

The report makes ten recommendations, five structural and five practical.

The structural recommendations are:

1. Raise awareness of existing curriculum requirements and the importance of financial education through a national communications campaign targeted at teachers and led by the Department for Education.

2. Enhance the ambitions of the current national strategy for financial wellbeing by aiming for all school-aged children to receive financial education by 2030 beyond the current target of two million more children.

3. Introduce financial education onto the national curriculum for all primary-aged children across the UK and ensure that provision at both secondary and primary is funded and delivered in real-world contexts to make it engaging.

4. Commission Ofsted to undertake a series of deep dives into financial education provision.

5. Conduct further research into how financial capability outside formal education could be better supported and how this could further equip parents and carers to support children’s financial education.

The practical recommendations are:

6. Commission Ofsted to map where financial literacy goals align with existing points in the curriculum.

7. Improve the availability and accessibility of financial education training to all teachers and ensure this is appropriately resourced by the Department for Education.

8. Enhance the awareness and accessibility of existing resources and support through improved signposting, to be led by the Youth Financial Capability Group (YFCG) in collaboration with the Money and Pensions Service.

9. Produce more contextualised resources to ensure all children receive a high-quality financial education and consider how the Quality Mark can further incentivise the creation of more tailored resources.

10. Develop and disseminate further guidance to better support teachers to navigate challenging and sensitive conversations around financial education.

Tax education in schools

The report does not look at the question of what financial education in schools should cover.

Under the ‘Citizenship’ heading the National Curriculum in England refers to preparing pupils “to take their place in society as responsible citizens, manage their money well and make sound financial decisions”. It states: “Pupils should be taught about… income and expenditure, credit and debt, insurance, savings and pensions, financial products and services, and how public money is raised and spent.”

Tax is notable by its absence from this list, something which disappointed CIOT at the time (2013). The Institute and LITRG had called for tax education to explicitly be part of the national curriculum.

In a joint submission to the All Party Group inquiry which produced this report, CIOT, ATT and LITRG said that:

• learning about tax is a key part of financial education
• it is vital to educate children about tax in school
• until tax is given more prominence within the National Curriculum, it is hard to see how schools will commit the necessary resources to educate their students on this important matter