Following work by an all party Parliamentary group in 2011 and a campaign by Martin Lewis, the founder of the Money Saving Expert website, some financial education classes have become standard in secondary schools.
Personal finance has been included as one part of a larger subject called citizenship, which is studied at GCSE, since September 2014 in England, while the Maths curriculum has also adopted some elements of money management.
Clive Nayler CFPCM, who has taught third year undergraduates as a sessional lecturer on the theories of corporate Financial Planning at the University of Worcester, believes matters are moving in the right direction.
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He said: “With the revised mathematics curriculum looking to ensure students leave school with an understanding of the mathematics skills needed for personal finance, there appears to be a solid platform here for those attracted to a career in Financial Planning and wealth management, alongside the government’s aim of combatting long term financial ‘ill-health’.
“Although the longer term impact on our collective financial well-being from this initiative remains to be seen, with an argument for a similar focus to be directed towards both primary school and workplace education, this inherent momentum provides an opportunity for a cohesive programme that also incorporates delivery at A-level and at undergraduate level.”
He said the issue of educating young people to become intelligent consumers and to equip them with personal finance knowledge was long standing and said that the “endemic lack of financial education in the UK should not be understated”.
Mr Nayler, who is currently a regional sales manager at Parmenion, cited two recent pieces of research to show that there was a clear need for greater financial education.
The Open University Business School found that 42% of consumers suffered “stress, anxiety and sleepless nights” as a result of poor financial management, rising to 60% for 25-34 year olds, while up to 70% of adults failed to answer GCSE level Personal Finance questions correctly with 30% scoring 43% or less.
Mr Nayler added: “An All Party Parliamentary Group enquiry in 2012 concluded in part, that new delivery models are required to achieve more substantial take-up of financial education in further education institutions. It is evident that the time has arguably never been better for the financial industry and the academic community to combine forces for our collective gain.”
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Despite the introduction of personal finance into school classes, some campaigners have remained critical.
MyBnk, a UK charity that teaches young people how to manage their money, wrote to the Government in February with ‘deep concerns’ that the financial element of citizenship studies had been excluded from exams, giving it significantly less importance for teachers.
It said the exams “completely ignored personal financial education and “young people will not be tested on things like budgeting, banking and interest rates”.
The ifs school of finance has also previously questioned how effective the lessons would be due to citizenship being a large subject and finance only being a small part of it. Citizenship covers a wide range of topics from justice to Parliament to ethnicity.
The national curriculum for Maths and citizenship is compulsory for only half of English schools, strengthening the concerns of sceptics.
With the A-Level and GCSE results published in the last week, another CFP professional, Michael Smith, called for more of teenagers’ time at school to be spent by learning about money matters.