Australian Securities and Investments Commission's 'Helping Our Kids Understand Finance'

1. Description of the programme
2. The study
3. Key findings
4. What are the costs?
5. Points to consider

Description of the programme

This was a teacher training programme delivered by ASIC to 8,003 teachers across 58 primary and 34 secondary schools in Australia.

It was designed to build:

• the capacity and confidence of teachers to teach consumer and financial literacy; and
• the financial literacy capabilities (skills, attributes, knowledge & understanding) of Australian school students, to enable them to make confident, informed consumer choices and responsible financial decisions essential to their future financial wellbeing.

The professional learning was supported by curriculum resources designed to engage students to apply their learning in real life contexts across mathematics, science and English. The resources included digital resources for teachers such as interactive whiteboard activities and online educational games.

The study

One independent evaluation of the programme (conducted by the Australian Council for Educational Research) has been published. This study involved qualitative interviews with project officers and a quantitative survey of teachers in 92 trial MoneySmart schools.

The evaluation does not measure the impact of the programme on the students themselves (or involve a control group) but instead explores teachers’ perceptions of the programme’s impact.

Key findings

The evaluation (which involved qualitative interviews with project officers and quantitative surveys of teachers participating in the trial MoneySmart schools) described positive impacts amongst teachers, including:

• There was strong engagement with the professional and personal learning provided, which they felt built their capacity to deliver consumer and financial literacy education in the classroom and had positive effects on their personal financial well-being
• Over 60% of primary teachers thought that resources boosted their confidence to teach consumer and financial literacy.
• Just over 80% of secondary teachers thought that the Units of Work prompted them to take a more reflective approach to teaching consumer and financial literacy.

What are the costs?

• The overall investment was AU$10m (approx. £5.5m), equating to an average cost of $108,696 (approx. £60,000) per school.
• 8,003 teachers were trained at an average unit cost of approximately AU$500 (approx. £277) per teacher.
• Online resources and the MoneySmart Teaching website had a cost per click rate of AU$78.86 (approx. £44). Future forecasting expects this to decrease to AU$15.46 (approx. £8.5) based on an assumption of no further investment.

Points to consider

The report also made recommendations for the evaluation of future initiatives to ensure that objectives are met, suggesting that an evaluator should be engaged from the start of the process to:

• inform the design of the evaluation;
• establish appropriate baselines to measure the progress of teachers in building their confidence and capacity to deliver consumer and financial literacy education; and
• design diagnostic testing to establish student baselines against which progress can be measured and tracked longitudinally.

Full report

Full research report