Sandi scrolls idly on her phone, looking up occasionally to see if her Dad has arrived to pick her up from the bus stop yet. She notices a great deal on a new phone case, so she taps to follow the link. The case looks so much better than her old tatty one, so she buys it and quickly enters her home address and pays the priority delivery charge to have it sent by tomorrow. She wants to have the case before she goes out with her friends tomorrow night.
Fast money
We all probably know lots of young people like Sandi. Skilled at finding information and products online, and just as quick to buy them. The financial skills of budgeting and saving for the things they want are still developing, but the online navigation and purchasing skills are highly advanced. The old marketing principles of capturing attention, maintaining interest long enough to get to the pay option, linking with a desire and finishing the process with a rapid and easy to execute call to action still hold true. But with a generation of young people in the marketplace holding the power to purchase in their hands and on their wrists, buying has never been easier or more immediate. They can scroll, click and purchase while multi-tasking on other daily activities, but they don’t always have the capacity to pause, walk away or consider a purchase before coming back to it. This can leave young people vulnerable to slick marketing and a buy now and don’t consider how to pay for it culture that thrives on fast transactions.
Financial literacy education
So where do teachers fit into this scenario?
With financial literacy taking a back seat to other learning outcomes in the maths curriculum, it can be hard to find the time to walk students through the skills and knowledge they need to make sound financial decisions. The maths curriculum at the time when young people really need financial literacy skills is already a crowded and highly complex area of learning. On a purely mathematical level, the skills needed for many financial decisions are relatively simple ones – calculating a percentage, using rates and ratios, working with simple and compounding interest and using four processes to perform single and multi step processes. Students don’t need to be highly skilled in senior maths to perform the calculations inherent in financial literacy tasks. They simply need to see the connection between the skills learned in earlier year levels and the financial activities of high school and the adult world.
Building time into the curriculum to teach students how to check their change, round a price up or down, fill in their timesheet, shop carefully and wisely, use a spreadsheet for income and expenses, join a super fund, pay their tax, calculate the increase in their HECS loan with indexing or work out the price of an item once a discount is applied can help equip students with the real life skills they need to succeed as adults. It can show them the power of setting savings goals for the phone case they want or at the very least, checking their bank account balance to make sure they have enough money for the purchase before they make it.
Challenging maths history
Some young people have had poor experiences with maths in their earlier high school years. They may have become disengaged from learning or have struggled to keep up with their peers during remote learning. Once back at school face to face, the jump between their own skills and those of their classmates has become a canyon too impossible to cross. But these are the very students who most need financial literacy skills for the future. They will need to know how to shop, work, save, purchase and plan for the things they want to do and buy. Without financial literacy skills, young people who have already struggled with maths become more disadvantaged. However, with some simple and engaging activities and purposeful learning, they can build important skills.
Changing things up
Working with simplified resources and real world examples, these students can benefit greatly from an adult teaching and learning style which focuses on strengths, capacities and individual goals. Review previously gained skills and find the point of challenge so that learning about financial literacy is engaging but not frustrating. Use scenario and story-based learning so students can readily apply what they discover to immediate situations and see how they are resolved. Focus on fundamentals such as four processes, percentages, graphs, tables and rounding and reinforce these skills frequently. Encourage calculators and quick checks to increase accuracy and avoid approaches such as times tables or rapid maths drills that are often more likely to alienate a young person than build their skills.
With time, care and deliberate teaching, most young people can leave school and enter the workforce or further study well equipped with the financial knowledge and skills they need to succeed in the future.
Take a sneak peak at our new Financial Literacy for Australian Learners resource, with this comprehensive preview.
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