Finance lessons in schools

It's interesting that it is necessary. I didn't receive finance lessons, but I was taught fundamental maths and have some common sense and with that understand at least:

They will also learn about interest rates and other financial issues in maths lessons.
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Is basic maths education so poor now that they can't even apply those fundamentals to things like interest rates and 'should I do this Wonga'?
 
Like many things I'd have thought it depends what is covered and to what level before we should be giving the notion unqualified approval. I note that it's up to the institutions to decide how long to spend on the topics albeit Ofsted will be providing some quality assurance.
 
School children will start learning about tax, debt and money management
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Preparing them for the life of finance/Debt they will lead. :p
 
Hatter The Mad said:
It's interesting that it is necessary. I didn't receive finance lessons, but I was taught fundamental maths and have some common sense and with that understand at least:



Is basic maths education so poor now that they can't even apply those fundamentals to things like interest rates and 'should I do this Wonga'?
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Interest rates aren't fundamental maths. If anything they are often designed to be as confusing as possible. Different rates on different mortgages working in different ways. Credit cards will have different interest rates depending on credit, balance transfers, cash withdrawals.

Not to mention other financial issues kids aren't taught about but really should be.
 
semi-pro waster said:
Like many things I'd have thought it depends what is covered and to what level before we should be giving the notion unqualified approval. I note that it's up to the institutions to decide how long to spend on the topics albeit Ofsted will be providing some quality assurance.
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Pretty much this.

Knowing the school system, they will be focussing far too much on theory, and not anywhere near enough on actual real life application and uses.

kd
 
i thought it said 'french lessons in schools' and i was gonna say end it all, but yeah finance lessons sounds a lot better and way more useful ;)
 
Excellent idea.

I am also in favour of the basics of English law being a compulsory subject - it seems completely ridiculous to me that people leave school without being taught about the legal system and processes which they will live under for the rest of their lives.
 
I think that education has a whole needs to change quite radically. Teaching needs to be done co-operatively across the subjects, so finance and financial matters would crossover between business and maths. English law should be taught as part of history as well as modern law - everything needs to be more "joined up" as it were rather than teaching things disparately.
 
Woden said:
Interest rates aren't fundamental maths. If anything they are often designed to be as confusing as possible. Different rates on different mortgages working in different ways. Credit cards will have different interest rates depending on credit, balance transfers, cash withdrawals.

Not to mention other financial issues kids aren't taught about but really should be.
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Interest rates are fundamental maths - growth and compound growth, part of the GCSE syllabus even today.

When I was taught it, I was taught what percentages, growth and compound growth and even had interest rate examples and questions in my GCSEs (9 years ago).
 
In my opinion it would be a good idea to extend School by one more year so we can actually fit all this information in at an age they will remember it.
I think that as a country we have to accept that not all parents have the knowledge required to teach children everything, so we should have cooking lessons, finance lessons and a little bit of law.
 
about time...

hopefully in a couple of decades the various door step lenders, pay day loans companies and credit cards aimed at ****** with 30%+ APR will all have to die out.
 
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