Mike’s Minute: Financial literacy in schools? About time

Regulars will know school and I were never really that close. 

It was a means to an end, and the end couldn’t come soon enough. The means was the skills required to get out into the world and get on with it. 

One of the things it did help with was economics. I found it genuinely interesting and did quite well in it. 

They taught me compounding interest. If you don’t know about compounding interest, you don’t know about life. 

Economics is life and its lack of understanding is why so many people have so many difficulties with money. 

As of 2027 financial education, it has been announced, will be compulsory in school in Years 1-10. I'd make it Years 1-13 but praise the Lord. 

This is education you can use. 

Geography, Latin, and physics are about career pathways and ideas you may, or may not, find interesting. As a result, you may, or may not, ever use them. 

But finance is about life, about success and about navigating the world. 

People who know what money, currency, interest, dividends, investment and returns are, do better in the world than those who don’t. 

It raises the question as to what education is about. Is it about a pathway to university, to skills, or to understanding, or the power and value of learning, or the basics of life? 

They used to do home economics, still do under different names. Is that a pathway to work with Alain Ducasse, or to make some scones on a rainy Sunday? 

I figure if nothing else school should be useful. A lot of people don’t use a lot of what we got at school. Things like nomadic tribes of Africa in geography didn’t serve me all that well, but compound interest has. 

Economics opened a door for me – a useful, beneficial and financially fruitful door. 

The idea that all kids will get that going forward is no bad thing. 

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