Life Skills and Citizenship

Lord Sandhurst Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness for obtaining this debate and for her excellent introduction. My focus is on the vital life skill of financial awareness and the need to include financial education in primary schools. Children nowadays do not handle cash every day and learn to budget, as some of us here did in the past. As adults, they will have to manage rent, mortgages and household bills. They must be equipped for this, but the evidence is that too many school leavers are not. Children do not see cash going out of their physical pockets. In a cash economy, no cash means you cannot spend. But cash is no more.

As a child, I knew if I had the pennies to buy sweets. It was easy. A seven year-old faced with a bank or card statement has a much harder task. Children must therefore be taught. Skills must be embedded young. To manage money and to budget is a vital life skill. Without the skill, debt and disaster follow. We know that gambling is a growing problem among the young as well as adults. As the Centre for Social Justice has explained, money habits and behaviours that will stick for life are formed by the age of seven, but two-thirds of primary schoolchildren receive no formal financial education. While financial education is now taught in secondary schools, since 2014, teachers say that too many children leave without an adequate grasp of finance, so it must start before then, in primary schools. We must act now and incorporate financial education in primary schools. I ask the Minister: if not, why not?