Schools: Data, Digital and Financial Literacy

Baroness Sater Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a broader point. Many of those issues are indeed covered in the curriculum. Specifically in relation to financial choices, there is dedicated time to look at social and moral dilemmas, to which the noble Lord refers, within the citizenship curriculum today.

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, the APPG on Financial Education for Young People’s recent report alarmingly highlighted that 41% of secondary school teachers in England said they did not think that financial education is required as part of the curriculum, and a further 15% did not know. Does the Minister agree with the APPG’s recommendation that Ofsted undertake a series of deep dives into financial education provision across schools as a matter of urgency?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am very sympathetic to the issues that my noble friend raises, but our approach to these issues has been to weave them through multiple aspects of the curriculum. My noble friend will be aware that, for example in relation to maths and computing, this is something that Ofsted will regularly be doing deep dives into when it is inspecting individual schools.