Schools: Financial Literacy

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Certainly, the aspects of the curriculum that relate to how to operate safely online include fraud, which is a growing and terrible problem, as the noble Lord points out.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom strategy for financial well-being sets a national goal to ensure that 2 million more children and young people across the UK receive meaningful financial education by 2030. I have not found any evidence yet that the Government have dropped this goal, although I have yet to find any evidence that the Government are on track to deliver it. But I would like the Minister to wonder how that goal can be achieved, given that research from the APPG on Financial Education for Young People suggests that two in five teachers are completely unaware of the legal requirement to teach financial education.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand the direction of the noble Baroness’s question. I would say that the data from the APPG report, which is extremely valuable, is none the less from a very small sample. It was from, I think, 401 teachers across the four nations. So, I think we have to be careful about extrapolating from that. The Money and Pension Service, which is responsible for delivering the additional 2 million children receiving good financial education has a wide range of programmes, including support for teacher training, communication and support for parents as well.