Financial Literacy in Schools

Students get 1,800+ hours of maths but less than 15 hours on real-world money. It's time to change that.

What am I doing this?

I am both a teacher and a parent. Every day, I see how unprepared young people are for the financial realities of adult life. In my own home, my children use money to buy things on iPads in games, and they constantly want to spend without understanding how to save or budget.This isn't their fault – it's a failure of our education system. Financial literacy is NOT covered and taken serious in our National Curriculum. We are not giving children the knowledge or confidence to make good financial decisions. As a teacher, I see students leave school without even the basics of understanding wages, bills, or debt. As a parent, I know how easy it is for children to develop bad money habits before they ever understand how money really works.That's why I believe we must take action now. If we can teach students about budgeting, saving, and financial responsibility from a young age, we can prepare them for the real world and stop them from making costly mistakes in adulthood.

The Shocking numbers

Despite these statistics, financial education is rarely prioritised. Students may learn how to count coins in KS1 but leave school without understanding taxes, payslips, budgeting, or debt.

What Schools Actually Teach More Than Money

These are just some of the topics that get more time than real-life financial skills!

A Practical First Step

Rather than waiting years for a government curriculum review, we can act now by piloting a financial literacy programme in local schools. The pilot would include:

Interactive 60–90 minute workshops where students work on real-world budgeting and decision-making tasks.

Teacher packs with ready-to-use lessons, worksheets, and follow-up projects.

Links to careers and entrepreneurship – showing students how financial skills apply to jobs and starting a business.

Why This Matters

We are teaching students to analyse Macbeth but not how to manage their first salary. This is a curriculum failure that impacts every young adult’s future.

Planning framework example:

FF8: To learn about different ways of saving and why it is important
🪙 Support:
• - To recognise what it means to save money.
• - To name simple places where money can be saved (e.g. jar, piggy bank).
💰 Secure:
• - To describe different ways people save money (e.g. saving at home, in a bank).
• - To explain why saving money can be helpful.
📈 Stretch:
• - To compare saving methods and explain how goals affect saving choices.
• - To reflect on how saving can help prepare for future spending or emergencies.

Funding and Next Steps

To develop resources and deliver a pilot in 5 local schools (~30 workshops), we need £12,000–£15,000. This covers development, delivery, and evaluation.
After the pilot, we can approach banks, councils, and trusts to secure larger funding and roll it out nationally.

Created by Brendan Morgan – Experienced Teacher & Financial Education Advocate

Financial Literacy in Schools

Fix Financial Literacy in Schools

Students get 1,800+ hours of maths but less than 15 hours on real-world money. It's time to change that.

Why I’m Doing This

I’m speaking up about this as both a teacher and a parent. Every day in the classroom, I see students who can calculate algebra and angles but have no idea how to read a payslip or budget their money. At home, my own kids use money to buy things on iPads in games. They constantly want to spend, but they don’t understand saving or how money actually works. That’s not their fault – it’s because we don’t teach these skills properly in schools.

Right now, financial education gets less than 15 hours across 11 years of schooling. Even Oak National Academy – the government-backed platform – only has around 10 lessons for KS3- KS4. AND it’s all hidden away in Citizenship, not in Maths, where it would be taken seriously. The new curriculum review for 2025 talks about inclusion, academic depth, and digital skills – but there’s still no plan to make financial education a priority.

That’s why I’ve created a full financial literacy curriculum with real lessons on budgeting, payslips, debt, and entrepreneurship. I want to pilot it in local schools to show it works. We can prove the impact now instead of waiting years for another government review that might still ignore this issue.

The Shocking Numbers

1,800+ hours of Maths
1,800+ hours of English
600+ hours of History
600+ hours of Geography
Less than 15 hours on Money

Financial education is almost non-existent compared to other subjects. We spend hundreds of hours on algebra, the Tudors, or volcanoes – but barely any time teaching how to manage money in real life.

What Schools Teach More Than Money

  • Weeks of lessons on The Tudors, Romans, Vikings, and Ancient Egypt.
  • Dozens of lessons on rivers, volcanoes, and world biomes.
  • Extensive time on algebra, Pythagoras, and circle theorems.
  • Multiple terms on Shakespeare and 19th-century novels.

All of these topics get more time than essential financial skills like budgeting, debt, and understanding payslips.

Why This Matters

  • 1 in 5 young people start adulthood already in debt.
  • Most students leave school unable to understand a payslip or tax code.
  • Financial scams targeting under-25s have risen by over 40% in recent years.

We are teaching students to analyse Shakespeare but not how to manage their first salary. This is a serious failure in preparing young people for adult life.

The Pilot Curriculum

This pilot focuses on 8 of the most impactful money skills for KS2–KS4 students. It uses interactive workshops and teacher packs built around these core lessons:

Lesson 1: Understanding Money

What money is, how we earn it, and how it moves through the economy.

Lesson 2: Budgeting Basics

Planning spending, saving, and needs vs wants through practical group tasks.

Lesson 3: Payslips & Tax

How wages work, deductions, and the role of tax in society.

Lesson 4: Banking & Saving

Bank accounts, interest, borrowing, and the basics of credit and loans.

Lesson 5: Debt & Borrowing

Understanding good vs bad debt, credit cards, loans, and consequences.

Lesson 6: Avoiding Scams & Fraud

How to stay safe online, spot scams, and protect personal information.

Lesson 7: Entrepreneurship

Starting a simple business project, understanding profit and costs.

Lesson 8: Real-Life Money Project

Students work in teams to create a budget for an event or project, presenting their choices at the end.

How It Works

  • 📚 Workshops – 60–90 minutes per class, covering key lessons with hands-on group tasks.
  • 📝 Teacher Packs – follow-up lessons, worksheets, and guidance for ongoing learning.
  • 💼 Career Links – connects finance to jobs, entrepreneurship, and real-world decision-making.

Funding and Next Steps

To develop resources and deliver a pilot in 5 local schools (~30 workshops), we need £12,000–£15,000. This covers curriculum development, workshops, and evaluation.

The pilot is just the starting point. Our long-term vision is a full financial literacy curriculum with weekly lessons from Year 1 all the way to Year 11. Every year builds on the last, ensuring that students leave school confident with budgeting, saving, borrowing, tax, and entrepreneurship.

Example Learning Outcome – FF8: To learn about different ways of saving and why it is important

🪙 Support:
- To recognise what it means to save money.
- To name simple places where money can be saved (e.g. jar, piggy bank).

💰 Secure:
- To describe different ways people save money (e.g. saving at home, in a bank).
- To explain why saving money can be helpful.

📈 Stretch:
- To compare saving methods and explain how goals affect saving choices.
- To reflect on how saving can help prepare for future spending or emergencies.