We need to change the game when it comes to financial education

He’s not wrong.

Research from the Money and Pensions Service (Maps) last year found that less than half (47 per cent) of the 4,740 children aged 7-17 they surveyed had received a meaningful financial education at home or school, a figure that’s pretty much stayed the same since the survey was conducted in 2019. 

Children’s attitudes and habits about money are shown to have developed by the age of seven.

FCA research suggests that nearly 13mn UK adults have low financial resilience, with a lack of financial capability being the key driver for a fifth of people showing signs of financial vulnerability, which ultimately puts the brakes on social mobility.

This all makes for a depressing read.

Despite the many challenges they face, I’ve yet to meet a teacher who doesn’t think that teaching financial education is a good idea. Getting teachers onboard is not the issue.

Delivering it consistently in all 20,000 primary schools is the real stumbling block and that can only be done with government leadership.

Initial signs have left me feeling positive for the future.

As it stands, the inconsistency in how it is delivered means it hasn’t always produced the right outcomes. And if you live in an area of greater deprivation, you are much less likely to receive any kind of financial education at primary school.

In the UK, to our shame, we’ve been squandering the potential of millions of children year after year because we don’t equip them with the everyday life skills around money that they need in adulthood. In doing so we perpetuate a pernicious cycle of disadvantage. 

That cycle has to be broken. And it has to be broken now. 

Study findings

Last year, RedSTART launched a landmark longitudinal multi-year study with The Policy Institute at King’s College London.

Our ‘Change the Game’ programme delivers game-based activities to introduce financial concepts and encourage primary-aged pupils to engage meaningfully with them.

We work with schools in areas of greater disadvantage, with the aim of providing access to financial education and the world of work, for children who are more likely to come across financial hardship later in life and less likely to have natural contact points with people in work, so we can give disadvantaged pupils a head start on their financial futures.

While the study is expected to run over several years, the results we’ve seen after just one year have been uplifting – and surpassed our expectations.

The evaluation of more than 3,500 children aged 6 to 8 years old across 45 schools in England and Scotland has found that the programme is already having an impact, demonstrating that early intervention in financial education is appropriate.

A child’s parents told me that their daughter had become so much better with money thanks to her involvement in Change the Game

After just one year’s exposure to the programme, we’ve seen a statistically significant small-to-medium-sized positive effect on children’s financial knowledge. 

There was widespread buy-in across the board from school teachers and senior leaders, who have said they found the delivery model and programme resources to be high quality, efficient, and relatively burden-free in terms of their day-to-day work, which indicates that our longer-term goals on sustainability and scalability are realistic.

Our fantastic corporate volunteers who provide invaluable support are also championed as an efficient way to improve learning activities, with the added benefit of introducing children to adults from varied walks of life who can share insights that they may not otherwise have access to.

Indeed, feedback from a Year 6 pupil who attended a workshop session held at a corporate partners’ office was that it was one of the best things they’d done while at school, and his aim was to get a job within that firm in future.

Strong engagement

Last – and most definitely not least – there’s strong engagement from the children who want to talk about the programme beyond the sessions themselves.

At a recent event at one of our participating schools, a child’s parents told me that their daughter had become so much better with money thanks to her involvement in Change the Game and was always talking about saving and what she wants to buy next in a way she had never done previously. 

That we’ve seen an impact on participating students at this very early stage of the study is an extremely positive sign that a full programme of learning across a number of years will help to improve children’s financial literacy.

We’re not stopping there.

But we’re not stopping there. This year we’ll be working with a new cohort of reception children (aged 4 to 5 years old) for the first time, which will see the study expand to around 60 schools, including six in Wales, and around 6,000 children in total.

We’re also rolling out a bank app, in which pupils earn virtual money through maths games, manage it through current and savings accounts, and spend on real items in a physical school shop – using real-world examples and practical experience to bring to life how to save, spend and budget. 

Our goal is to develop a strong case and blueprint for how to make it impactful and sustainable through a structured ladder of consistent, repeated learning. 

It’s clearly early days, but these initial signs have left me feeling positive for the future – and until the government creates and rolls out a proper lifetime financial education strategy, starting in primary school, I don’t intend to stop trying to change the game anytime soon.

Sarah Marks is chief executive of RedSTART Educate