The Quality Mark is designed to give educators confidence that the financial education materials they are using are of the highest educational value, contain accurate and up-to-date information and are engaging and relevant for young people.
The Quality Mark is designed to give educators confidence that the financial education materials they are using are of the highest educational value, contain accurate and up-to-date information and are engaging and relevant for young people.
“They empower you to have the confidence to deliver lesson content, as you know the resource is of high quality.”
– Primary School Teacher
Whether you are a teacher, parent, carer, volunteer or anyone else working to improve young people’s understanding of money, you need to know the resources you are using are up to the job.
As the UK’s only widely-recognised accreditation system for financial education resources, the Quality Mark plays a crucial role in supporting high quality teaching and learning about money across the UK.
The Quality Mark is only awarded to financial education resources that meet seven essential criteria. To be awarded the Quality Mark, a resource must:
A dedicated Theory of Change and evaluation plan
As part of the Quality Mark service you will be offered the services of an evaluation consultant to support you to produce a Theory of Change and evaluation plan for your resource. Should you feel that you can produce these tools independently with some light touch support, please download our Self-Help Evaluation Guide.
For further information about the seven essential criteria, read our Quality Mark Resource Producer’s Guide.
Fee: from £1500
Charitable fee: from £750
The Quality Mark application form is accessible online. Please get in touch if you have any questions.
Bursaries for the full cost are also available for non-profit organisations. If you are a non-profit with a resource, or plans to develop one which you think could be eligible to receive the Quality Mark, then please complete this section of the application form linked above.
Download our Quality Mark Resource Producer’s Guide
Download our Self-Help Evaluation Guide
All resources listed on our Resource Hub have achieved the Financial Education Quality Mark.
The Financial Capability Strategy for the UK – launched in October 2015 – set out the ambition for all children and young people to receive financial education that works. This has been followed by the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing which aims to see 2 million more children and young people getting a meaningful financial education.
This means providing Quality Mark learning materials that are accurate, up-to-date, of the highest educational value, and engaging and relevant for young people.
Funded by the Money and Pensions Service, we award the mark to evidence-based resources that have been tried and tested with their target audience and meet the Quality Mark’s seven essential criteria.
Resources are assessed by a panel of independent experts, two educational experts and one financial expert.
The Quality Mark is funded by the Money and Pensions Service. This funding relationship follows 12 years of valued support from Prudential UK, who funded the service from it’s establishment in 2004 to summer 2016.
This funding allows the service to grow and develop whilst assessment fee paid by resource producers cover the cost of each submitted resource’s independent assessment.
Pre-Assessment
The development of the key documents (i.e. the Theory of Change, Evaluation Plan and Evidence Portfolio) can often take a significant amount of time. While there is plenty of support available from ourselves and our consultants – included in the cost quoted above – it’s best to expect around 1-3 months to complete this stage.
Assessment
Quality Mark assessments take up to two weeks to complete, though it’s best to allow three weeks to account for admin time and other minor processes. It’s worth bearing in mind, however, that large resources may need to be split into multiple assessments which would have both time and cost implications. We will be able to tell you if this is the case once we have seen the resource ourselves.
Post-Assessment
Once the assessment has been completed, the timeframe from here to accreditation is entirely dependent on the type and quantity of feedback provided by the assessors. We will provide each organisation with a summary of this feedback, after which it’s up to them to act on any recommended changes. Once completed, please allow 2-3 working days for the award to be finalised.