The issue of financial education in schools is likely to be debated in Parliament after an online petition by MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis saw signatories pass the 100,000 mark.
According to the ifs School of Finance, this is the number required to trigger consideration for a parliamentary debate.
Rod McKee, vice principal at the financial education charity, said a debate on making financial education compulsory in schools was “long overdue but very welcome”.
He said: “For several years policymakers and commentators have been ignoring the evidence that shows including financial education in PSHE or maths, or devoting only one-off lessons to the subject does not work.
“We provide financial capability education resources to well over 400 schools and colleges and the overwhelming evidence confirms that only standalone, age appropriate education programmes that have sufficient time devoted to them can change future generations’ financial behaviour.”
Over 100,000 teenagers have taken an ifs financial capability qualification since they were made available to all schools and colleges in September 2006, with a further 30,000 teenagers expected to take these qualifications during the current academic year.
Eddie Grant, president of the Personal Finance Society, signed the petition. He said: “This is excellent news. Kids aren’t taught to manage money and to do the basics - renting property, entering into contracts and these are very important things.
“It’s vitally important that we equip students with financial knowledge. It’s more than just pure financial education.”
Mr Grant believes we are currently seeing the consequences of a lack of financial education.
He said: “That’s evident. We had a culture of savings and that is broken so we need to re-instill it. At the age of 21, graduates will leave university with £20,000 plus of debt. That’s more debt than a lot of people would feel comfortable with as it is unsecured.
“The debate will put on the table issues that cannot be avoided. Children often don’t study economics until they enter their A-level years. I would like to see a GCSE for financial education.”
