There is an excellent article in the Guardian this morning by Nell Frizzell that concludes by saying:
Every year I hand over £350 to an accountant to fill in my self-assessment form for me because trying to get to grips with that level of financial logistics is like trying to grow a third leg: confusing, painful and, I suspect, impossible. It's pathetic and craven and may even read as smug. But also, as my eyes plough across the incomprehensible pages of the HMRC website and I sit numbly through another episode of Money Box, I can't help but want to shout: if you are never taught this stuff, how on earth are you meant to know what you're doing?
Her lament relates to much more than tax. She does not know about pensions, mortgages, savings, student loans, interest rates and other seemingly basic stuff (from my perspective, which I know is abnormal).
But she is right. Who can blame her when this stuff, which is so fundamentally important to life, is never taught anywhere by almost anyone to the multitude of people who need to know about it in the UK and who are regularly taken for a ride or simply lose out badly because they do not have the requisite knowledge to prevent that happening?
We teach RE compulsorily in schools, and every child ignores it.
We do not teach about the real world.
I'm not saying knowing RE is wrong. But have we got our priorities right? I am not convinced.
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Education and simplification would wipe out large swathes of the finance industry.
….and we can’t have that!
Quite.
Ignorance is necessary part of the control system that keeps the City in control. Money rationing as per 1984 keeps the plebs in their place. Just the toryZ (old money) engineering poverty to keep power. Nothing new.
Professions are conspiracies against the laity.
So said George Bernard Shaw. I don’t agree entirely but I can see what he meant.
Education should start with an understanding of what goes into the recycling bin.
Every school day, one child in each class should bring in one item from the recycling bin for discussion in the classroom for one hour. Initially the class would need some help from the teacher, but eventually by the age of 16 they would all understand how the real world works and for whose benefit.
They might then be able to dissect fact from fiction and demand change.
Basically we are taught to be ignorant – that is all I can say. And then we are manageable by the Establishment.
Speaking as a mature student if I had my way we’d all start at university as soon as we could read and write. The brakes came off me when I went to uni at 29 – I can only speak well of it.
“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.”
Peanuts (Charles Schultz)
When I was actively working, I did my own business accounts as a sole trader and submitted my annual self-assessment to HMRC for over 30 years and helped my wife to do the same.
The HMRC system if awful.
I would guess that most adults are used to looking a bank or investment statement and will understand money in/out, the balance in the account or funds owing and when interest is paid with or without taxation.
But the HMRC statements are absolutely impenetrable. There is, for me, no simple one sheet statement of what HMRC calculated I should pay, what money I’ve paid & when, and how HMRC have calculated interest they have paid or charged…….. The list is very long.
And to cap it all, looking at my HMRC ‘Statement History’ as I write this, the only statement available is dated 03 June 2021……. There are no others.
HMRC is just another part of our dire Civil Service which fails to fulfil the needs of a modern state and it’s citizens
HMRC staff cannot work out what HMRC statements mean, in my experience
Every time a new social problem is recognised and somebody suggests that the answer is for children to be taught about it at school I despair because as you so rightly say about RE, if you want children to ignore a social issue then make it compulsory.
However, the basics of personal finance may be the exception.
For example:
I once asked a group of 18-20 year olds in full-time education, who partly supported themselves by working, how many of you are employed on zero hours contracts? Lots of puzzled faces, but no hands went up.
So I explained how a zero hours contract worked and asked the question again. This time three quarters of the hands went up and everybody wanted to know more about zero-hours contracts.
At the time the ONS published two different figures for numbers of employees on zero hours contract.
A number given by employers and the number of employees who self-identified as being on a zero hours contract.
The employers number was always twice the size of the employees number Exactly the kind of result you would expect from my informal classroom survey.
On coming to power the Tories dealt with the problem by getting rid of the higher employers number.
Learning that the Tory party does not believe in treating others fairly, but will whine incessantly and mightily if they perceive the slightest unfairness against them, is an important life lesson.
Thanks
When I finally left the Inland Revenue (and I’m sure they were as glad to get rid of me as I was to be rid of the work that had caused me to leave), I took a teacher training course to brush up on my Post-Graduate Certificate. I already knew what I wanted to do – to help young people to learn about the world they’d soon be entering – and as my assessment Course Creation option created a one-lesson-a-week course for teaching about tax, etc. , based on an American Civics course. I got a Distinction for that, and, still being well aware of the likely reaction to the proposed course, hawked it around the county I live in, and the next county.
As I was expecting, I was told there was a) no need for such a course and b) that it wouldn’t help the scholars. The only school that was interested was a private school – the one to which we had sent our daughter, who is severely dyslexic and who was getting no assistance from the local education authority, who still didn’t recognise dyslexia. The only problem was that, as I don’t drive and there is no bus service anywhere within walking distance of the school, I would need to find a way of getting there. Ten miles each way, uphill going to the school, downhill coming home. It would take too long to walk. Taxi? The cost of it would have taken more than the money I’d receive – there would be no possibility of anyone else needing a taxi up to the school and back.
So I fell back on teaching English as a Second Language, for which I had achieved a qualification by taking evening classes during the last years of my Inland Revenue employment.
And here I am now, thirty years later, retired, and still angry at the short-sighted attitude of most educational authorities. even now.
What a loss
What was in the course? Is it still worth sharing?
Probably not. There are a lot of changes that, having passed Parliamentary scrutiny and therefore supposed to have been implemented – any course I designed today would have to take these into account, if only to warn scholars of what might suddenly be sprung on them!
Fair enough!
In the Scottish secondary curriculum we have an entirely different subject in Modern Studies to the mash up of Personal and Social Education down south.
It covers what can loosely described as Civics. It covers democratic structures, types of voting, government, political parties, attitudes to such as the death penalty, contemporary social issues like poverty, In many ways it parallels the Scottish History and Geography curriculum, which already includes racial discrimination/civil rights and climate change.
Unfortunately, Modern Studies is not compulsory, and sadly is often only taught in short modules in S1 and S2, but the kids love it, and not just the mock election stuff.. Almost all 12 year olds, when posed an open ended ethical or moral question, will willingly express a view, and argue a position.
Nor does it depend on academic ability when taught properly, being inclusive.
One of the best class discussions I ever supervised was a group of 15-16 year olds on the US death penalty and whether lethal injections were cruel and unusual punishment.
It would be relatively easy to incorporate a more specific economics and finance unit within Modern Studies, covering such essentials as the differences between monetary and fiscal policy, and the key concepts as Richard has outlined. There are already government funding issues involved.
I agree here with Jeni that there is a huge gap and a wide ranging and compulsory Civics type course that includes money matters, would be a hugely positive experience for students.
It is frustrating that this chasm continues to exist.
Imagine people actually understanding what a fiat currency is, the difference between capital and revenue expenditure, and real relationship between the central bank and Treasury departments.
However, I do wonder about how good American Civics courses really are in raising understanding and enhancing informed voter decision making, given what we can observe from Presidential election campaigns.
There is the Money & Pensions Service, an “arm’s length body” of the government, set up in 2019. Part of its remit is financial education in schools. It says: “The Strategy includes a goal to ensure that, by 2030, two million more children and young people in the UK are receiving a meaningful financial education.” Two million more than what isn’t clear.
https://maps.org.uk/en/work-with-us/financial-education-in-schools
There has been talk for years of providing financial education in schools. But as others here have said, it’s probably too much of a threat to the financial services industry, which thrives on complexity and opacity. I sometimes look back with nostalgia to the days of the interest rate cartel operated by the Building Societies Association, which ensured there was no, or very little, competition on mortgage rates. Made life much easier!
2 million is also a drop in the ocean
There are roughly 700,000 children in each year of the school cohort
What will happen to all the rest who miss out on this education?
The excellent grammar school that I attended (1950s/60s) was named for one of the promoters in Parliament of educational reform, George Dixon. One of Dixon’s Birmingham initiatives, my school’s forerunner, led to the Technical Instruction Act 1889 to equip boys through additional years of education in science and mechanics.
In other words, the industrial needs of the day started to be met. Dixon was a visionary—a rare breed in our day. I suspect the criminal mind of short-termism is the guilt party in our day, a favourite of neo-lib economics to evaluate performance. I have to ask whether today, this philosophical setting at the core of the political establishment prevents children from being broadly educated to fulfil their potential in their post-education years?
So, yes! Education needs to enable children and students to do the basics of information search, tabulation and arithmetic for life. And, unless you are Ken Dodd, filling in the tax form is not multi-choice, but let’s not go there!
My hope with the teaching of RE is less as a means of imparting ‘faith’, but that it can provide the student with a framework to develop their own belief or non-belief journey and, hopefully, to argue against religious clap-trap. And more so, they can step into the broad and profitable schools of Ethics and Philosophy.
Peter
I think RE is a great A level
I am less convinced as @ compulsory gcse
Richard
RE is not compulsory at gcse, is it? My granddaughter didn’t take it last year.
Many schools make it so, it seems
“…. this stuff, which is so fundamentally important to life, is never taught anywhere by almost anyone to the multitude of people who need to know about it in the UK and who are regularly taken for a ride or simply lose out badly because they do not have the requisite knowledge to prevent that happening?”
This is an easy question to answer. In the last forty years, as financial structures have become more complex, and the demands to understand money become more abstract, it is quite deliberate policy not to teach people the necessary skills; neoliberalism needs ignorance (it would prefer outright illiteracy, how much easier that would make their prospects). How are neoliberals going to rip-off the public with impunity, if people begin to understand what is being done to fleece them, by a finance sector charging them for doing very little, or over-charging them for basic services. How is the public supposed to make informed decisions? They aren’t.
Incidentally, it has long seemed to me that if personal finance (I use this narrow definition deliberately) was given priority in the school curriculum (with teachers able to teach it), I am quite confident interest in, and ability in mathematics would improve. The problem with mathematics is its relentlessly abstract nature. This lack of clear, external, purpose (especially at the age it is introduced to children) will naturally appeal to quite a narrow sample of any population of pupils. This does not mean only that narrow sample can benefit from mathematics, or contribute to it. Relevance is critical to knowledge; as is inspiration – the desire to acquire it. Knowledge requires a purpose, usually a real life purpose to motivate people. The relevance of money to life provides an instant power to an interest in solving problems that are meaningful (relatable, given good examples) would, I believe stimulate far more productive interest in mathematics.
If youngsters today were taught about tax and finance, it would be from the neoliberal, neoclassical, conservative viewpoint.
As someone who attempts to teach my Post 16 students about the basics needed to understand Sociology, I try my best. Yesterday half the Yr 12 class couldn’t name the PM. They’re just not interested, hooked on their phones. I’ve discussed politics with those who will be old enough to vote at the next election. Bar a couple of current affairs nerds, the consensus was disinterest. I pointed out their liberal views, and how those might be judged or discarded in years to come. We’ve watched all sorts of political stuff, I’ve used Richards videos on money etc.
I’d like compulsory education on this stuff, but it would be neoliberal and full of BS.
Thanks John
Worrying
But relfcting some of my experience
If you want proof look at
https://maps.org.uk/content/dam/maps-corporate/en/our-work/uk-strategy-for-financial-wellbeing/maps-uk-strategy-for-financial-wellbeing-2020-2030.pdf
And
https://www.young-enterprise.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/FINANCIAL-EDUCATION-PLANNING-FRAMEWORK-11-19-ONLINE-2020.pdf
https://www.teachingcitizenship.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/National-Curriculum-Programmes-of-Study-for-Citizenship-with-ACT-guidance-and-notes.pdf
which both talk of public money being raised by taxation and spent by government despite the latter saying teaching should avoid bias.
Be careful what you wish for!
showing my age – in 1960s high school I was not great at Maths so instead of taking GCE level was in a class studying for CSE Maths and we learned all kinds of stuff needed to run a home. How many rolls of wallpaper, tins of paint etc. interest rates, savings, mortgages, don’t remember pensions, wish we’d been able to keept the exam papers. Maybe somewhere they are archived? Why do we keep re-inventing the wheel? Where was this enlightened progress ditched? by whom?
Weird isnt it that the CSE was so much nore useful?
I’m surprised no-one seems to have pointed out that most schools do offer the Core Maths post-16 courses, such as https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/mathematics/aqa-certificate/mathematical-studies-1350/specification-at-a-glance
This is an excellent course and I’ve really enjoyed teaching it, but there are limited resources to support its delivery in schools.
It isn’t suitable for everyone and I wouldn’t recommend forcing it on all post-16 students, but often students who are initially reluctant to engage with it become more interested as they mature.
How many people take it?
Not enough! https://royalsociety.org/news/2023/12/core-maths-provision/#:~:text=In%20the%202021%2D22%20academic,geographically%2C%20provision%20is%20unevenly%20spread.
Only about 7% of the potential students, according to this. I’m surprised to see that only one third of schools deliver it – certainly not my experience, but maybe there is a higher coverage in my region, for some reason.
Thanks
Good luck with it
Is there a text book?
We’ve used this one: https://global.oup.com/education/product/aqa-mathematical-studies-student-book-9780198365938?region=uk
It has some good sections, but I found it a bit patchy, like almost all maths textbooks – there isn’t the money in it anymore to have the time to write really high-quality textbooks.
Thanks
Curiosity might see me buy it….
Just a thought, but if you fancied contributing to any lesson plans, I’m sure there would be many grateful teachers out there. I have some half-formed plans for a lesson or set of lessons on the many ways it is more expensive to be poor for example.
I’d love to do that, but really doubt I have the time.
But, are there any short explanatory videos that would help?
The AMSP also provide some free supporting materials on their Integral platform – I probably ended up using this more than the textbook. Not sure if you can get access to this without a school attached to you 🙂
My daughter, who has a degree in.Classical Studies, is part of the Student Progress team at the local Sixth Form College.
As part of her remit (as well as British Values) she seems to be responsible for teaching students about finance and will often ask me questions about this ( as a retired chartered accountant). There seems to be no formal teaching material, she is just winging it.
I’m sure she does a good job, as far as she can, but ad hoc education is not what’s needed here.
Precisely
Schools may be different now, but when I was there we were taught to obey, believe and remember, nothing else. Thinking for oneself was frowned upon and questioning was punishable.
My high school was part of the Church Schools Company in the 60s.
Anyone who did not choose Divinity as an O level had to do it in lunch breaks.
I asked our teacher, called Miss Lamb, believe it or not, why we had to do it in our lunch breaks and she sent me to the head, who caned me for asking. Supports what you were saying.
Sorry this is a belated response but I just wanted to say – be careful what you wish for.
I have been looking at the resources provided by organisations which are promoted as giving guidance. It’s amazing how much material is supplied by financial institutions. Of course they have no vested interests.
I looked at the Money and Pension Service’s Strategy for Financial Well-being
(https://maps.org.uk/content/dam/maps-corporate/en/our-work/uk-strategy-for-financial-wellbeing/maps-uk-strategy-for-financial-wellbeing-2020-2030.pdf) which says things like “Children will get a meaningful financial education so that they become adults able to make the most of their money and pensions”. How many children come from homes where making the most of money means managing to get food on the table? The whole tone of the strategy seems heavy on personal responsibility for your financial position. It talks of financial security without any hint that that is a pipe dream for a significant number of people.
They recommend the Young Enterprise resources for schools ( https://www.young-enterprise.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/FINANCIAL-EDUCATION-PLANNING-FRAMEWORK-11-19-ONLINE-2020.pdf ) which say that 11-14 year olds should know that, “ the government collects money through taxation and uses it to benefit the wider community” and that they can say, “ I understand that I am responsible for my future financial security and can improve my own financial situation through the choices I make.”
Then there’s The Association for Citizenship Teaching which says the curriculum should be delivered, “in a way that maintains political impartiality and avoids bias” but then states that children should know how “public money is raised and spent”. So that’s another generation who believe Mrs Thatcher.
Scary stuff
The Institute for Fiscal Studies, which the BBC uses as its source, says:
“Where does the government get its money?
The Government raises around £1 trillion in revenue each year. Most comes from the three biggest taxes: income tax, NICs and VAT.”
I’ve contacted them about 3 times by email and Twitter, and they never reply, despite providing references.
https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/where-does-government-get-its-money
And in a sense they are right
What is wrong is that this funds spending