Instead of my usual forray into techy stuff at SETT, this year I thought I’d try and take in something that wouldn’t usually have jumped off the page at me. So here I am in the small (but select) company of about 20 folk to hear all about the ‘Money Week’ project. I love the idea of suspending the curriculum for a week, and doing something specific and multi-disciplinary, so I’m very interested to hear how this went.
Fiancial education is a cross-cutting theme. This bring a real link to employability, as the financial industry is a large employer in the UK. Lots of individuals struggle with managing money, so it is vital that we educate well. This is part of the anit-poverty agenda.
Roz is DHT at Dunblane primary. Resource that started a few years ago from a throw-away comment from HMIe – although kids had good numeracy skills, they weren’t financially savvy.
Money week is learning in context and a cross-curricular theme. Standard Life are paying for this to go into every school. Schools need to request this from LTS if they don’t get it. It covers financial understanding, financial competence, financial responsibilty, financial enterprise.
Change in shoppiing habits – very different to how we were taught. Credit and store cards. Kids didn’t realise that electricity is paid for (direct debit hides this transaction). Do kids understand that in order to take money out of a hole in the wall, you have to have money in the bank to cover it!
‘Prostitiute to Materialism’ – throw-away comment about Carol Vorderman’s loan adverts.
There are very few traditional shops – most kids experience shopping in different ways, yet traditionally we still teach handling money in the old ’shop’ environment.
We grew up in a cash based economy, but our kids have grown up (largely) in a credit based economy. Cultural diversity – Muslims for example cannot take part in interest reaping/gaining financial services.
Money week is in themes for each stage. Covers every area of the curriculum (except PE! – although you could have presumably done something with Nike etc and how they product test/develop/market – just a thought?)
It cost ÂŁ48 to run Money Week for 19 classes and 2 pre-5 units. Not bad, eh? How much would you have been spending that week on ‘normal’ education?
If we don’t give our kids the opportunity to manage money, how can we expect them to be responsible citizens?
I found that quite interesting. I really like the idea of centrally coordinated and produced packs that schools can choose to use or not. I’m a great believer in cross-curricluar learning, so it’s great to hear of such an initiative.
The pack will be issued to schools by Christmas. If schools decide to run a Money Week, could they let Jim Lally at LTS know? It would be good to get a picture of how popular it has been across the country.
