Talk Money Week is an annual campaign run by the Money and Pensions Service in November to get the nation talking about money. To this aim, we ran a session with Year 10 and 11 students to look at the financial implications of different pathways after leaving school – including university, apprenticeships and employment.
After the session, we asked students what they had found most useful and the answers included payslips (learners had never seen one before), student loans, tax and apprenticeship pay.
This shows the importance of talking money with young people and, as we know, there’s not a great deal of it in the 11-16 maths curriculum and spare time is not something we have the luxury of.
There are, however, plenty of ready-made resources available and I’ve listed a few of my favourites here:
- Financial literacy does play a big part in the Core Maths curriculum and there are some great resources around which can be used with other year groups. Cat Van Saarloos (aka Core Maths Cat) has put together this fantastic padlet with LOTS of ideas and links.
- Young Enterprise has got plenty of great resources including this page on Financial Education and a link to the updated version of Your Money Matters (a book designed for use with young people aged 14 – 16 covering topics including spending and saving, borrowing, debt, insurance, student finance & future planning.)
- Natwest have Classroom Workshops and resources on their Money Sense website.
- Find useful information aplenty on Martin Lewis’ website Money Saving Expert including a great video on Student Loan Mythbusting.
- You could also use one of our where Maths meets the World of Work resources, Try being a freelance filmmaker – Percentages, ratio and budgeting.
- I have recently come across Tim Harford’s Radio 4 podcast Understand: The Economy. He looks at common terms that we hear in the news like inflation, interest rates, GDP and explains them. Useful for teachers and students alike!
Hopefully, that will have provided some inspiration, and if you are interested in having a session run at your school, please get in touch with your local Area Coordinator.
By Jude Mortimer