A lack of support for teachers means UK schools are falling short of legal requirements to teach financial literacy to all children, MPs have warned.
Moreover, two-fifths of teachers do not know financial education is a legal curriculum requirement. The all-party parliamentary group for financial education (APPG) found schools were still struggling to teach a subject that has been mandatory since 2014.
This meant the positive impact of making financial literacy a legal requirement was “yet to be yielded”, the MPs said in a report published on Wednesday.
Jerome Mayhew, the group’s chair, said the government and wider society should play a role in promoting money education in a world of “increasingly complex” financial systems. “We continue to undervalue the power of financial education to serve our young people and the wider economy,” he said.
In the APPG’s survey of more than 400 teachers, 70 per cent said training was a barrier to teaching about finance, and around half said there was no ringfenced budget for teaching financial education in their school.
Teachers also said too many competing priorities made it difficult to make time for financial education, and more than half said they thought teaching finance was “challenging”.
