I personally believe this is a good thing, and have thought so for many many years. Not sure how many of these e-petitions turn into action, but no harm in supporting something you believe in. Regardless of career choice, the one thing everyone needs to know about is money and how to manage it.

Make financial education compulsory

Yep, good petition, (Signed). Started by Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/latesttip/

Not sure how many of these e-petitions turn into action

If they get 100k signatures then they have to be considered for debate in the chamber.

It’s a terrible idea. No child is going to pay attention to a lesson like that, especially as it will be stuck in as a compulsory half course GCSE type subject, the kind everyone hates – being forced to do something incredibly boring that you have no interest in at 15 does that.

Also as it won’t be a “proper” subject, you’re going to have the headteachers assistant teaching the course, which although will be incredibly simple, it will be taught incredibly badly, and made even more boring.

I’m very aware I have no idea about finance, when people say things like APR and gross interest I have no idea what they’re talking about. But when the time comes that knowing these things would be helpful, I do have several options. Parents, google, or I could even talk to a bank.

97% of people support this, yet no one will take up the baton.

Just screams fake statistic.

My brother until recently did exactly this role for the bank he has been working for. He covered schools in Surrey and Sussex and went out giving lessons on finance, banking, budgeting and so on.

He feels it was, in most cases, a complete waste of time.

RealMan, you could make that argument about the vast majority of subjects taught in school. It’s not a good argument not to do it; it’s an argument to make the lessons more interesting.

What could they really teach? the factual side of finance would only really cover a couple of lessons.

The only real way to learn this stuff is from practical experience, far better to be encouraging parents to be open with their kids and involve them in the family finances.

Some life skills are better learnt at home, not at school.

Parents, google, or I could even talk to a bank.

“I think I’ll go and check on Google or ask my parents before I buy that fancy flat screen telly and then accrue vast interest and debt on a credit card I should never have applied for”

Even less likely

much as the financial illiteracy on his forum pains me, I dont think formal education is the answer.

As above, it’s really something that should be developed at home and in practice. I think the financial institutions have an obligation though to not only keep their products simple to explain but also have a duty to educate their customers when it’s clear they dont understand. Not assume that just because someone has put their mark on the bottom of page 6 of legalese in compact 5 point text they know what they’re doing.

It depends how its delivered.

If its taught by teaching staff then yes it will (in alot of cases) be badly delivered by people who don’t really know what they are talking about either.

However, if its delivered by a financial professional who knows how these things work & the difference between truth & urban myth then i feel, & have done for a number of years, that it could prove invaluable.

Banks (Natwest) have no place in doing this. They are just using it as a means to flogg their own products by putting their name (staff faces) in front of teenagers at an early stage & alot of their staff are not experenced in life & dealing with money to offer a proper insight in to how to manage money. Sounds odd to say it but alot of the bank staff i have come across have very little understanding of their own finances let alone teaching the next generation how to manage theirs.

I think there is definitely a place for this in existing education, possibly as part of mathematics.

I suspect the majority of people would find a basic understanding of mortgages and APR considerably more useful than say, calculus or linear algebra.

There’s a few of us saying it should happen at home. It did for me for the most part and I’m sure for many people in the future it will do too. Unfortunately we’re not all blessed with parents who want to educate and inform us on what is not taught in schools, so if that means making the important stuff mandatory in schools then I think it is a great idea. I think in general education needs more focus on preparing you for life rather than educating you on topics you may never need to understand for the rest of your life.

I suspect the majority of people would find a basic understanding of mortgages and APR considerably more useful than say, calculus or linear algebra.

Now I’ll start by saying it wasn’t last year 😉 – but I’m fairly sure we covered that and the O Level test paper covered it too

Some life skills are better learnt at home, not at school.

I don’t disagree; the problem there is that it assumes a nice middle-class existence where parents actually give a toss.

I’ve thought for a while now that ‘life skills’ should be taught in schools as a lesson; what might’ve been called Home Economics in pre-GCSE days.

Basic cookery (that’s actually useful, rather than how to boil water, and chocolate rice krispies). Money management, using ‘good’ debt and avoiding ‘bad’ debt, mortgages. Things that we put down as “common” sense like how not to get ripped off. How to survive on your own in the big wide world. Changing a car tyre, hanging wallpaper, gardening.

the problem there is that it assumes a nice middle-class existence where parents actually give a toss.

I had nice middle-class parents who gave a toss. They instilled basic financial sense, but they never actually sat me down and tried to explain APR, compound interest, pensions or mortgages to me, despite them both working for a bank.

I’m not convinced that many parents do.

How to survive on your own in the big wide world. Changing a car tyre, hanging wallpaper, gardening.

Ask STW. 😉

I’ve thought about this a bit as well, and my view is that it could be taught through a set of financial games/competitions amongst a group of kids, using fake money. It could be a lot of fun, and would probably work better in class than at home.

I’ve thought about this a bit as well, and my view is that it could be taught through a set of financial games/competitions amongst a group of kids, using fake money. It could be a lot of fun, and would probably work better in class than at home

Great idea. I’m thinking back to my days of playing Monopoly as a kid. I didn’t really understand what was meant by “mortgage” but for me it was a last ditch desperate attempt to stay in the game, rather than the route (and apparent God-given right) to home ownership that it is marketed as to adults.

1) what should be dropped from the curriculum to make room for this?

2) if people are that concerned about it, wouldn’t it be better to get involved with their local/kids’ schools’ PTAs and help develop something as part of PSHE?

1) what should be dropped from the curriculum to make room for this?

Nothing. A lot of this could be taught as part of maths. Interest is a good example of percentages in action for example.

OK, what would be on the curriculum then ?

Intro:
Debt = bad (unless you’re a nation or houseowner or want to go to university)

Practical:
Overshopping Debt = easily resolved by declaring bankruptcy / voluntary doodah – (this can be homework, to watch an hour of daytime tv)

Advanced level:
Debt = run it up to the max, then wind-up your company and shaft your investors / creditors / customers. Set up new company to buy out remnants of old. Repeat

Higher level:
Become a banking institution. Debt = good. Encourage. Don’t worry about default; if you’re big enough the government will sort that out

GrahamS is on the right tracks. I can clearly remember enjoying lessons much more when what I was learning was put into some useful and interesting “real world” context. I remember sitting through a boring physics lesson once, then immediately perking up when my teacher said “…and this is how an amplifier works” 🙂

Yep, I didn’t see the point of calculus till a tutor pointed out that knowing the tangent to a curve means you can control a ballistic missile.

I like scaredypants curriculum

At our school we did compound and simple interest in maths, and we had life skills lessons too. Nowt on mortgages, pensions or hanging wallpaper tho.

I was rubbish* with money till I suddenly had a mortgage to pay for on my own to keep a roof over my head then I got better. Still by too many shiny things but don’t get into debt.

* altho having read other peoples money woes in the last few years I don’t think I was all that bad

maybe a GCSE in common sense aswell? 🙄

grahams: how do you come to the conclusion that teaching more isn’t teaching more?

Cos I’m no good at maths? 😉

No idea what the modern curriculum is like, I’m not a teacher and it will be a few years till our little one has to start it, but presumably they already teach kids about percentages and compound growth?

So isn’t relating that to credit cards, savings and mortgages really just a case of choosing appropriate real world examples?

Complete waste of time. It’s a parents job to ensure the child has a good understanding of the value and costs of things – this is something that I witness not to be the case day in day out. Can we have compulsory testing for people wanting to be parents instead please, as I’d say 50% of them are not fit for purpose from recent observations!

Parents should be educating their children about these things – it’s called growing up.

It’s a parents job to ensure the child has a good understanding of the value and costs of things

But there is a big difference between understanding a generalised ethic about “the value and costs of things” (which I agree parents should teach) and understanding the more practical aspects of money management that let you apply that ethic (e.g. APR, compound interest, tax, mortgages, credit cards, pensions, investment, insurance).

If its taught by teaching staff then yes it will (in alot of cases) be badly delivered by people who don’t really know what they are talking about either.

However, if its delivered by a financial professional who knows how these things work & the difference between truth & urban myth then i feel, & have done for a number of years, that it could prove invaluable.

or its delivered badly by a financial professional who hasbnt the first clue how kids learn and doesnt understands the basics of classroom management. Said financial professional gets torn a new arsehole and never goes back in a school.

grahams: I see you’re a software engineer. Next time you have an hour conference call with a client to discuss a database you’re building, can you also explain the data protection act to them? It’s like, more or less the same thing, and all you’d have to do is use practical examples of the database. 😉

How do I start an e-petition to ban all future e-petitions??

Yet again so many on here are giving an ‘informed opinion’ when they are not well informed at all.

Percentages and APR are already taught in maths lessons. Economic and industrial understanding has been a compulsory part of PSCHE throughout the Key Stages for many years and this includes a Financial Responsibility element within it. Organisations like PFEG produce a wide range of resources which teachers use in these lessons.

Comments like this:

I’ve thought about this a bit as well, and my view is that it could be taught through a set of financial games/competitions amongst a group of kids, using fake money. It could be a lot of fun, and would probably work better in class than at home.

Get this response from me: 🙄 🙄 🙄 You’ve thought about this a bit but not done the smallest amount of research which would show that this is already happening up and down the country

konabunny: it’s not my job to educate clients though. If I did then they might not need me any more. But yes if a client wanted a database that was going to breach data protection then I’d probably mention it.

Yet again so many on here are giving an ‘informed opinion’ when they are not well informed at all.

I did say I wasn’t a teacher and didn’t have kids at school so I’ve freely admitted that it is not an informed opinion; just an opinion. 😀

Percentages and APR are already taught in maths lessons. Economic and industrial understanding has been a compulsory part of PSCHE throughout the Key Stages for many years and this includes a Financial Responsibility element within it. Organisations like PFEG produce a wide range of resources which teachers use in these lessons.

Okay good. So if this stuff is already taught then why do so many people not seem to have any idea about it?

So if this stuff is already taught then why do so many people not seem to have any idea about it?

There’s another question here, though: if this stuff is already taught then why do so many people not seen to have any idea of that fact?

Ans: because few parents actually bother to take an interest in their kids’ education.

I think there’s a difference between teaching something in school and actually altering behaviour on a large scale, especially when everyday life brings people into contact with someone offering easy lines of credit

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying don’t bother. I like the idea of not leting you leave school without a minimum pass in, maybe 1st aid (or rather, recognising when illness may be serious) and maybe some life skills such as money stuff.
Not sure that people need to be taught the maths, though – better to be taught the consequences “if I spend £500 a month more on my credit card than I can pay back, how long ’til I lose my house/car/chances of ever getting… ?”
plus some “If I do need short term money, what can I do about it rather than find a loan shark”

regardless, take smoking: 20+ per cent of people do it despite knowing it’ll likely end their lives early. why would we expect everyone to avoid building up debt when it’s entrenched that credit/debt and financial risk is acceptable, even desirable. Look how cross “we” all are now that banks are expecting 10% deposits for mortgages rather than giving out 110% loans on no deposit.

The government is already teaching kids about finance. Basically if they want to get educated it is going to cost them a fortune and they will be in debt for many years 🙂

There is a group of people who always think you have to be an expert on something to have an opinion. Why? Opinions are formed based on our experience but we also rely on supposed “experts” to advise and guide us. Martin Lewis – self-proclaimed money saving expert – started this petition. Should I immediately doubt his credentials and his validity to make such a claim and potter off to Google to do my own research? Who’s to say that is any more valid?

All this petition is to do is to start a debate in parliament. If that debate concludes that the answer is is not in education but in stricter controls on providing credit to those who can ill-afford it, then why not? I cringe when I see adverts on TV telling people – I’m paraphrasing – “go and buy that 42″ plasma TV that you can ill afford ‘cos we’ll give you credit at a crippling rate”.