I believe that schools should be educating secondary students on financial literacy. Students should be aware on how to manage money before being thrown into the deep end, college. Financial literacy is learning to have a tool kit to help guide decisions regarding money, including spending, saving and making smart investments.
Teachers play a significant role in the lives of students, having an immense influence on teenagers. This means that if teachers were to give lessons on financial literacy, it could have a monumental impact on the future generations. Pupils can learn about financial literacy at home but many don’t for various reasons. These include children with: busy parents, uneducated parents, children with no parents, unwell parents and more. Taking this into consideration, I think it is best for students to learn the importance of finance from their teachers.
There are various ways to implement teaching about financial literacy. For example teachers can first educate themselves to gain an understanding of their own skills and knowledge. Teachers can deliver lessons and share their experiences, if comfortable, to allow students to get an insight on possible situations that we may later experience ourselves as adults. Another way teachers can deliver the importance of finance is true life like role plays, where students experience budgeting and life like situations.
The benefits of learning the basics of finance is that students will somewhat be prepared for future. Most students may not be aware of the financial crisis which is burdening millions of families currently in the UK. This is due to the increasing council taxes, utility bills, increase of price on essentials including food, all combined with the stagnant wages. This means that the cost of living in high and this is the perfect reason as to why students should learn about this now so that they can plan for their future properly.
It is crucial to learn about finical literacy at a young age itself because, they are surrounded by opportunities where they are expected to make financial decisions. This includes: getting a bank account, getting pocket money, buying school lunch, keeping track of money while running errands for parents, buying gift for friends, and more. Students should grasp the idea behind finance at a younger age so that when the mature they can use these skills to navigate the adult world.
We are lead to believe that maths, English and science are the only essential subjects and that without the knowledge of these subjects, we would struggle. I believe that this does not tell the whole story , since a practical and real life skill such as finance literacy is just as crucial, if not more.
In my point of view, it is ideal to learn the idea behind finance and how it impacts our lives. We must learn this skill in childhood as no one will be there to guide us as thoroughly, when in adulthood.
