Learning with Parents
Learning with Parents is a tech-based charity that supports all families to have positive learning interactions together. We currently partner with over 150 primary schools across England, mostly in areas of high deprivation.
Financial Literacy and Disadvantage
In the UK, not all children have a fair shot at education. By age 11, a disadvantaged child is on average ten months behind their peers in English and Maths. The gap is even more severe when it comes to Financial Literacy. The financial skills of an average 15-year-old from a disadvantaged background were found to be similar to those of an 11-year-old from the most advantaged background (Anders, Jerrim and Macmillan 2022).
“Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have less frequent money conversations with their parents and are less likely to be shown how money works.” (Anders, Jerrim and Macmillan 2022)
It is clearly harder for parents who are themselves struggling financially to support positive money habits in their children. How can you allow your child to practise with pocket money when you don’t have enough money spare to give them any? How do you model a positive relationship with money when it a frequent source of stress and anxiety?
Learning with Parents’ Financial Literacy Programme
Learning with Parents has partnered with IG group to develop a Financial Literacy programme, aimed at primary school children and their families, particularly those facing the greatest barriers.
This is a whole school programme based on the Young Money. It has six strands, one for each school term. The strands include topics such as ‘Making Choices’, ‘Planning and Budgeting’ ‘Risks and Emotions’ and ‘Spending and Saving’. The activities are a mixture of real-world experiences, conversations, role play, creative activities and games. The programme’s design and content were based on focus groups with parents to understand their priorities and challenges and school leaders to find a structure that would work in practice.
The parents we spoke to were very motivated to support their children to develop confidence with money, an awareness of how much things cost and experience of saving. Several parents raised the difficulty of explaining to children that transactions on cards and contactless involve real money. Parents would like support having these conversations with children but were concerned about creating worry about money. Generally, parents were surprised how young it was recommended to start financial conversations with children.
All the suggested activities are designed to be possible on very limited budgets and the activities can be adapted by families to suit their individual circumstances.
The Money and Pension Service review of the evidence into effective Financial Literacy Education (Harrison, Shaw and Ansel 2023), recommends that programmes should include start early, involve parents and include experiential learning. This places Learning with Parents in an ideal position to offer an effective programme. We have also followed the recommendation to focus on cognitive factors, such as habits of mind, prioritising and problem solving, alongside knowledge and attitudes.
The Learning with Parents’ Financial Literacy programme will be piloted from September with 1,000 families from Reception to Year 6. Its purpose is to give children the knowledge, skills and experiences that enable them to manage their own money in the future. It also encourages families to start having conversations about money with their children and gives them the starting points to do so.
For more information
If you’d like to find out more about Learning with Parents and their work, please get in touch on hello@learningwithparents.com or visit our website https://learningwithparents.com/