By Jaya Carrier
I hope everyone’s having a great week so far and can start to see the light at the end of the T4 tunnel! There have been some really interesting discussions about the personal development and pastoral curricula looking ahead to next year. In light of this, I was really interested to see some recent research from the UCL Institute of Education about financial skills and literacy. Objectives: To examine the financial skills and understanding of students between ages 7-17. Summary:
- This study wanted to measure the understanding and abilities of students with respect to finance - including looking at tax, interest rates, inflation, spending and savings.
- This study worked with 3,745 children.
- The study found that the financial skills of 15-year old students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, were equivalent to 11-year old students from the most advantaged backgrounds
- 33% of 11-17-year-olds from low socio-economic status families could not work out the amount of money they would have in their savings account with an interest rate of 2 per cent. This is compared to just 14% of children from more affluent family backgrounds.
- There was also a difference in the number of students reporting about learning about financial literacy - students from more affluent backgrounds were much more likely to explain that they had learned about ‘working out change from shopping’, ‘saving money’ and the ‘difference between things you need and things you want to buy’.
- This study also spoke to parents. Parents from all backgrounds believed in the importance of speaking to their children about money, but more affluent parents had a greater degree of confidence in doing so.
Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:
- What is the value of students having good financial literacy?
- How do I support this work in my lessons or in my tutor times?
- What do I want to do to support this further in the future?
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