Financial Services: Education
Education

Fiona Bruce (Congleton, Conservative)

To ask the Secretary of State for Education

(1) if he will encourage Teach First to include the teaching of financial literacy as part of their teacher training;

(2) if he will provide funding and support to provide high quality personal finance education in all primary and secondary schools.

Nick Gibb (Minister of State (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)

Finance education is currently taught as part of Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education. The last Ofsted survey of PSHE, in 2010, included limited evidence about the teaching of personal finance education because the subject was relatively new. We are looking at the quality of finance education as part of a review of PSHE to determine how we can improve the quality of all PSHE teaching.

We set out, in our White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching”, how schools will be freed from central Government direction, and how we will trust the professional judgment of teachers to decide on the teaching that best meets the needs of their pupils. Consistent with that principle, we have also protected front line school budgets, and reduced central government programmes, so that schools can also decide how to use their resources to meet local priorities. We therefore have no plans to create a database of personal finance education teaching resources and volunteers. Schools are aware that there are a number of sources available from which they can obtain useful information, including, for example, the Personal Finance Education Group, who have a wide range of resources on their website aimed at teachers and finance education practitioners.