Across the political spectrum, there\u2019s increasing discussion about the need for young people to leave school with the financial skills they need for adult life. But too often, the debate stops short. What do young people mean by \u201cfinancial education\u201d? And where is it best covered within the curriculum, if we even know what it means?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To answer both of these questions, the Maths Horizons team went below the surface of the often-repeated request to \u201cput financial education on the curriculum<\/a>\u201d.\u00a0Our research today, based on polling of 4,000 young people aged 11 to 30, found three important things.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, when asked what financial literacy means, young people overwhelmingly said one thing: learning how to manage money. Everything else was well down the list into indifference. Not equations or calculating interest rates, but day-to-day skills.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, and probably relatedly, young people don\u2019t see this as a maths question. In fact, the largest proportion of young people said this should be taught as a standalone subject, or incorporated fully into citizenship or tutor time.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n And third, we found no evidence that studying financial education in schools correlated with greater confidence as a young adult.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because financial education has been in the primary curriculum in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for over a decade, and in the secondary citizenship curriculum in England since 2014, we can compare outcomes between young adults who did and didn\u2019t receive formal financial education at school across the four nations based their behaviour as adults. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We find no difference in the number of young people recognising financial terms (or correctly identifying made-up concepts) by whether they were taught this in school.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also found no evidence that teaching financial education in schools, whether in maths or elsewhere, makes a meaningful difference to financial confidence in adulthood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The strongest predictors of financial confidence were experience and practice as a young adult: using a credit card, setting a budget or even just talking about money at home. Maths attainment showed a small positive effect, but being taught financial education at school, in and of itself, wasn\u2019t a statistically significant factor.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n