Getting financial education onto the national curriculum was a “pyrrhic victory” and “self-defeating”, the journalist and campaigner Martin Lewis has admitted, as schools lack the resources and capacity to deliver it.
The Money Saving Expert founder also revealed to MPs that his charity paid more than £500,000 to publish a textbook on financial numeracy because former schools minister Nick Gibb told him the state would not pay for it, in what he dubbed a “political failing”.
The national curriculum was beefed up in 2014 to include more elements of financial literacy, particularly in maths. Lewis was one of the leading advocates for the move.
But quizzed by the Parliamentary education committee this morning, he said it was “in many ways…a pyrrhic victory”.
