Learning from the CISIA first step towards tackling the alarming inability of a growing number of households to manage debt - that's how Helena Morrissey, Chief Executive of Newton Investment Management and Chair of the Investment Management Association, sees the inclusion this September of financial education into
the UK's basic national curriculum. Writing in
The Telegraph, Morrissey expresses concern that "there is still nothing on offer for primary school children besides basic money, percentage and problem-solving skills in maths".
The fact that free schools, academies and independent schools are not obliged to follow the national curriculum is another flaw, she believes.
Addressing the oft-cited argument that it is difficult to create space for new topics in an already full national curriculum, she concedes that "it's easier to identify the problem than to solve it".
The solution, believes Morrissey, "lies in a much closer partnership" between businesses, schools and policymakers.
A good example to build on, says Morrissey, is
the partnership the CISI and pfeg (Personal Finance Education Group) established earlier this year.
The Telegraph comment
Still a way to goWhile Kevin White, deVere Group's UK's Head of Financial Planning, acknowledges that the development is "a victory for common sense" he believes "the battle has only been half won".
He shares Morrissey's concern that not all schools have to adhere to the national curriculum.
"We need to now focus our attention on the academies and free schools," says White. "We're urging the head teachers and teachers of these schools to appreciate and value, as those who teach the national curriculum have now done, the vital importance of focused financial education in today's world.
"Financially speaking, the world has changed in recent years, and it is continuing to evolve at an incredible rate. It would be a massive disservice to our children not to teach them 'money'."
deVere Group opinion
It doesn't add upMerryn Somerset Webb, Editor-in-chief of
MoneyWeek, argues that financial education is a waste of time and money, in part because it will not be retained for long.
Writing in the
Financial Times, she refers to a review by Richard Thaler, co-author of
Nudge, of the results of 167 studies of attempts to teach people about personal finance. Thaler concluded that even the most intensive courses were "pretty useless", says Somerset Webb.
"What hope, then, that a 16-year-old taught about pension planning should remember anything of it by the time a working lifetime has passed?" she asks.
Somerset Webb advocates that the money earmarked for teaching personal finance education should instead be spent on providing better mathematics education.
She notes that "young people in the UK are some of the most mathematically illiterate in the developed world" and says: "Fix that - so that everyone understands the nature of compounding, for example - and we would be halfway there."
Financial Times article (sign-up required)
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