Financial Education

Chris Vince Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) and my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove) for securing this debate. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) that a 20p coin is heptagonal.

I support the need for further financial education in schools, but as Members may have sensed from my poker face earlier, I have a few caveats. Please take them as constructive, rather than destructive.

Having worked for a homelessness charity, I know that people cannot budget their way out of poverty, but this conversation is not just about budgeting. It is about the wider views and ideas on financial education. Members on both sides of the House have recognised the power of teaching young people about some of these pitfalls and scams, such as the impact of turning to payday loan sharks when times are tough. It is not about telling young people how they have to live their lives or what they have to do, but about providing awareness of the dangers that they face.

As many hon. Members will know, because I mention it in almost every speech I give, I used to be a teacher. I was a secondary school maths teacher for 15 years, teaching young people from year 7 to year 13, including teaching A-level maths and further maths, so I taught maths up to degree level. I absolutely love trigonometry. Wait until you get to further maths trigonometry, and sine and cosine rules, Madam Deputy Speaker—I can tell you, it is brilliant. I also specialise in statistics, strangely enough, despite my engineering degree. There is a misapprehension that the ability to teach maths equates—excuse the pun—to an ability to teach finance. If we were having the ordinary to and fro that we normally see in the Chamber, I would defend myself by pointing out that I can read a book, but I cannot teach English literature. Finance and maths both include numbers, but history and English both include words and they are different subjects.

When I chat to my Conservative friend—he is the reason I am in this place—we have very animated discussions about education. I once said to him, “What do you think is the most important skill for a teacher?” He said, “Well, discipline, and the ability to get marking done on time.” He came up with a whole list of things, but I said to him, “The one thing you have not mentioned is the ability to explain things clearly—surely that is the most important skill for a teacher.” I could teach the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham how to do compound interest, which comes up on the maths curriculum, but if I were asked to teach him how pensions work, I would struggle. That means not that I do not know how pensions work, but that I have not been taught the skills to teach that to somebody else. People do not naturally have the ability to explain things; they have to be trained in that skill.

I hope what I am saying, in a roundabout way, is seen as constructive, not critical. If we believe in financial education—[Interruption.] It is just like being back at school—put the phone in the box, Minister. You don’t have to really—[Laughter.] If we believe that teaching financial education is important in schools, then it has to be taught properly. The hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham correctly said that measures were brought through this place over 10 years ago, but the subject is not truly being taught in schools in the way that we would like it to be. I would like it to be a distinct, bespoke subject. At worst, it could be a module taught as part of a subject like business studies or economics—my wife is an economics teacher, so she will love me for that suggestion—rather than adding to the already extensive maths curriculum. I do not think it would be feasible to add financial education to the maths curriculum or that that would have the outcome that the House wants to see.

The hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham talked about the importance of financial education being measurable, and I could not agree more. One of my biggest frustrations as a maths teacher—have I got time, Madam Deputy Speaker? I will not go on a big story—was when a student would say to me, “Is this going to be in the exam?” That was frustrating because I genuinely love maths. I wanted to teach people that a²+b²=c², not because it was going to come up in the exam but because it is truly interesting.

[Jerome Mayhew]

It is the way he says it.

[Chris Vince]

I can see the hon. Gentleman was a model student.

We have to recognise the way the school system currently works. If young people think there will not be an exam on a subject, they do not think that subject is measurable. Equally, if teachers do not see that something is going to be measurable in an Ofsted inspection, it will be moved down the list of priorities. We have to recognise that a lot of teachers have a lot on their plates. If we want financial education to be on the top of the plate—the cherry on the top, perhaps—we need to ensure that it is measurable, accountable and taken seriously. I do not believe that bolting financial education on to the maths curriculum will make that happen; I would much prefer it to be a bespoke subject. I have rambled on enough but hopefully I have made my point.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.