Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the teaching of financial education in schools.

The national ‎curriculum sets the expectation that pupils study financial education through a variety of subjects.

The Citizenship programmes of study for key stages 3 and 4 (for 11-16 year olds) include teaching of the functions and uses of money, the importance of personal budgeting, money management and the need to understand financial risk.

The mathematics programmes of study have been strengthened to give 5-16 year olds the necessary mathematical skills they need to make important financial decisions. The primary mathematics curriculum places a stronger emphasis on essential knowledge, including the arithmetic underpinning calculations with money and percentages.

The new mathematics GCSE is more challenging and demanding than before, and illustrates the essential concepts that all pupils must learn. For example, setting up, solving and interpreting the answers in growth and decay problems, including compound interest and working with general iterative processes.