Money Heroes

Money Heroes is an award-winning free programme from Young Money, supported by HSBC UK, which seeks to transform financial education for primary children, aged 3–11, in school and at home.

A range of resources, tools and guidance for parents and teachers, hosted on a bespoke online platform, ensure that children have the opportunity to develop their financial capability. All resources cover the core themes from the Young Money Primary Financial Education Planning Framework and all teacher/parent facing resources and guidance have been awarded the Quality Mark.

Our research with Censuswide in October 2020 on 1,001 parents with children aged 5–20 demonstrated a critical need for a programme that offered financial education resources to be used by both parents and teachers, enabling a collaborative, child-centred approach to teaching financial education both at home and in the classroom. As a result there is an acute need for the Money Heroes programme at this time.

• 89% of parents think it’s important for their child to learn about money at home and at school.
• 80% would benefit from regular updates on how to support their child’s education in certain topics.

The Money Heroes platform has been developed to enable schools and parents to work together to expand children’s financial capability with the help of high-quality, easy to use resources and features:

• Teachers and parents can bookmark resources, mark resources complete as well as select which child has completed which resource to track their learning progress.
• Teachers can create groups on their dashboard. This can be based on class groups, year groups or abilities – the choice is theirs.
• Teachers can invite parents to collaborate and see their child’s learning progress via their dashboard by sharing their unique code under ‘Invite Parents’.
• Teachers and parents can request printed versions of our resources, including books, a board game and a parents’ guide, via their dashboard.

To make learning fun and engaging, our available resources include:

• A range of Quality Marked activities for home and school
• Ed and Bunny, KS1 storybook series
• Super Stories for Money Heroes, KS2 chapter book
• Activities following the storybook characters and themes to expand learning
• Ed and Bunny Go Shopping, board game, for ages 4+
• Money Heroes, digital game, for ages 7–11
• Money Heroes parent guide
• Money Heroes podcast series

The storybooks are available both as accessible eBooks or as printed copies to cater for different learning styles.

Money Heroes is also offering schools free in-house teacher training and bespoke 1:1 mentoring support to equip teachers to plan and deliver high-quality and impactful financial education.

We will also be launching two new storybooks and a podcast episode looking at the link between financial education and sustainability. This will support HSBC UK’s priorities surrounding money choices affecting the planet and encourage children to consider the connection between money and their local/global communities, a topic which is at the forefront of everyone’s minds at the moment.

We have also partnered with BBC Children in Need to reach the UK’s most vulnerable communities. The Money Heroes programme, resources and website will be adapted to accommodate the needs of the groups we will be working with, including:

• Children in and on the edge of care
• Young carers
• Children affected by poverty and deprivation
• Early years
• Disabled children
• Children with learning disabilities

With HSBC UK’s support, The Scout Association have created a new Money Skills Activity Badge to help Beaver and Cub Scouts build confidence and an understanding of money. We are excited to support the creation of a practitioner guide for informal educators.