This article is the latest part of the FT’s Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign
If the Financial Times visited your local primary school to take an assembly about money, what subjects do you think students might like to learn more about?
It takes 10-year-old Sawyer just seconds to answer. “Tax,” he says.
In the run-up to the UK Budget, he has been encountering this word — and the strong emotions it provokes — much more frequently, even hearing his parents talk about it.
“It sounds like a bad thing, because it’s a bill,” he says. “Everyone my age is aware of it. But I don’t feel like we learn it. We’re not taught about it enough. I don’t think we’re taught about it at all, to be honest.”
This might strike you as unusual, but Sawyer is not an outlier. Generation Alpha has a burning desire to learn more about money in the classroom, perhaps informed by a greater awareness of the financial challenges lurking further ahead in the future.
A new study has found 84 per cent of six to 18-year-olds want to receive more financial education in school, with an emphasis on practical skills such as budgeting, how to earn money and build a career, as well as how to achieve milestones like buying a home.
The vast majority of 2,000 British students polled said learning about money was equally or more important than core subjects, including maths, English and science — yet current teaching provision in UK primary and secondary schools is patchy at best.
At a round table of children and parents organised by GoHenry, the debit card and app for children that carried out this research, the consensus was that formal financial education needs to happen earlier, and be more relevant to modern life.
The government is currently consulting on a proposed review of the curriculum, and a coalition of financial businesses has urged Sir Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, to make financial education compulsory in all English schools, stressing the economic and social benefits of teaching children about how money works from an early age.
Parents in the room, worried that their children had received very little if any financial education at school, leaving them ill-equipped to manage the complex and increasingly digital financial landscape that surrounds them.
The rapid advance of the cashless society is only the start of this. Young children are frequently exposed to gaming apps that require digital payments or recurring subscriptions. As they get older, the allure of “buy now, pay later” deals and online finfluencers peddling crypto and get-rich-quick schemes abound — a new world of risk that many parents feel ill-equipped to teach them about.
Jade Bloom, mother of 10-year-old Isla, was concerned that the few times that money had been incorporated into her daughter’s school lessons it merely involved adding up different sums.
“That’s not finance; it’s not learning the value of those pennies and pounds,” she says. “With the cost of living crisis, this should be something they learn about more, but I don’t think it’s changed since I was at school.”
Some might argue that primary school aged children are too young to learn about money and the worries of the adult world. However, there is a body of research showing that money-forming habits and behaviours begin at the age of seven. Charities such as MyBnk and the FT’s own Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign have long been lobbying for financial literacy and capability to be included at primary level.
“There are lots of parents out there who aren’t confident enough to talk to their kids about these topics, or maybe don’t know themselves,” says Louise Hill, co-founder of GoHenry. The app contains gamified “money missions” for children of all ages to complete to learn more about money as they save, spend and complete tasks to “earn” their pocket money. Older children can complete modules about the economy, the basics of investing and “adulting” — which has content on renting, bills and — wait for it — taxes.
“The whole point is, if you make it understandable and you make it something kids can get involved in, then it’s not scary.”
On the rare occasions when financial education happens in the classroom, the children really engaged with lessons that gave them an insight into the adult world. Cassius, 15, said he had one memorable lesson during an end-of-term activity week, where he and a friend were given a budget to plan a holiday.
“I just liked the fact that we had a budget of this much, and could then set up the holiday, making decisions about places to stay, places to go and what we could afford,” he recalls.
His mother, Sabina Gran, also remembers this lesson, even though it happened five years ago. “I remember he came home and wanted to tell me all about it, because that was quite an unusual thing for him to learn. But it ignited an interest in him about learning to budget.”
The family lives in a rural area and Cassius is saving up for driving lessons. He has been investigating how expensive car insurance is — learning that shopping around for financial products is a valuable life skill — and many conversations have been had about how the family could budget for this.
His mother laments the decline of the Saturday job, noting how few of her son’s teenaged friends have experienced employment compared with her generation. However, she encourages his side hustle of designing football posters, which he has sold at The Teenage Market in Warwickshire. This is a national initiative giving creative teens a shot at selling their products by taking a free stall at an organised event.
“For me, the most important thing wasn’t understanding that he could make money from something he’d created, but communicating with different age groups of people and learning customer service,” Gran says, proudly recalling the moment he sold his first poster.
GoHenry sees money coming into teens’ accounts from a variety of online selling platforms, estimating that a quarter of British teens make money in this way. Depending on the app, it is possible for 13-17 year olds to operate a seller’s account with the direct supervision of a parent.
Sawyer, who makes his pocket money by doing odd jobs for his grandfather, is very interested to learn more about the kind of careers and earning power he could have as an adult if he went to university.
The rise in tuition fees has been in the news, and his mother, Michelle Sheridan, says this is something he finds quite daunting.
Neither he nor any of the other children had received any teaching time focused on careers. A separate work and careers poll by GoHenry earlier this year found that 23 per cent of children aged 6-17 wanted to be a social media influencer.
Paying more than £9,500 a year to study for a degree feels like an impossible sum to these young minds. They have yet to grasp the complexity of the student loans system, which will result in many students paying a higher rate of income tax for up to 40 years.
“A nation educated into debt, but never about debt,” is how Martin Lewis, the founder of MoneySavingExpert, summed it up 14 years ago when the government of the day first proposed that personal finance should be taught as part of personal, health and social education classes. As plans for the new curriculum take shape, let us hope the next generation of students will pass through the school gates with more valuable lessons learned.
Claer Barrett is the FT’s consumer editor, and a trustee of the Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign; claer.barrett@ft.com; Instagram @Claerb
