Randomised controlled trial evaluation of The Money Charity's workshops in Schools

1. Description of the programme
2. The study
3. Key findings
4. Points to consider

• Description of the programme
• The study
• Key findings
• Points to consider
• Full report

Description of the programme

[This is an extract from the Executive Summary of the evaluation report. Further amendments may be made to this Summary, pending review by the Evidence Hub partner]

The Money Charity’s Workshops in Schools and Colleges cover aspects of money and finance and aim to increase students’ confidence, knowledge and skills relating to money matters. They are delivered in hour-long sessions to classroom-sized groups by trained consultants.

This project aimed to explore the causal impact of The Money Workshops on Key Stage 4 (KS4) and post-16 students’ behaviour, attitudes, confidence and knowledge relating to managing money. It also aimed to explore perceptions of the quality and effectiveness of the workshops, the conditions necessary in schools to support the workshops, and the scalability of the approach.

During the autumn term 2017 and early spring term 2018, a total of 109 Money Workshops were delivered across 25 of the 30 intervention schools involved, in schools in areas of England, Wales and Northern Ireland where workshop consultants are based (five intervention schools did not book workshops for timetabling reasons and other priorities). A total of 4,423 students were booked onto these workshops. The trial focused on workshops on planning and budgeting (Workshop A) and savings and credit (B) at KS4; and student finance (A) or independent living (B) plus a workshop on savings, credit, banking and insurance (C) at post 16. Most schools took part in one workshop only (mainly Workshop A at KS4 and Workshop A at post 16). The Money Charity recruited and trained ten new consultants to deliver the workshops, and provided refresher training to five established consultants.

The study

The evaluation involved a school-level randomised controlled trial (RCT), where schools that signed up to the trial were randomly allocated to either the intervention group (with workshops in autumn term 2017 and early spring term 2018) or the control group (as part of a waitlist design, with workshops in spring 2018 after they had completed a follow-up survey). Schools from the maintained and independent sectors took part at KS4 (Year 10 or Year 11), at post 16 (Year 12 or Year 13+), or with both age groups.

A total of 59 schools took part in the trial, 30 intervention schools and 29 acting as controls; 3,543 students completed a baseline survey (developed as part of this project); and 2,438 completed a follow-up survey, 1,679 of which had also completed the survey at baseline and were used in the outcome analysis. As fewer schools than originally modelled joined the trial, a combined analysis of KS4 and post-16 students was carried out to enhance the power of the analysis. The pre-specified outcomes explored whether The Money Workshops make a difference to: students’ behaviours and attitudes towards money (the primary outcome); and five secondary outcomes – students’ confidence with managing money, and with talking about money; students’ self-reported knowledge of savings and credit, and of planning and budgeting; and what students know about money (according to a knowledge score developed for this study).

A process evaluation was also conducted involving: questions for intervention students in the student follow-up survey (718 respondents); a survey of teachers (22 respondents from 20 intervention schools); observations of four workshops; telephone interviews with five consultants; and six school visits each involving an interview with the key teacher involved and a focus group with students (around six students per group).

Key findings

There was no significant difference between the intervention and control group students’ attitudes and behaviours relating to money; the primary outcome for the trial. However, the Money Workshops had a significant positive effect on:

• students’ self-reported confidence in managing money (effect size of 0.19); 93.4 per cent of students in the intervention group had a positive confidence rating at follow up compared to 79.4 per cent at baseline
• how much students’ feel they know about savings and credit (effect size of 0.32); 85.0 per cent of students in the intervention group had a positive rating after the intervention compared to 78.8 per cent at baseline
• how much students’ feel they know about planning and budgeting (effect size of 0.22); 93.3 per cent of intervention students had positive views of their knowledge of this after the intervention compared to 91.5 per cent before.

These effects are impressive, given the space of time between the workshops and follow-up (on average around 6 weeks) and considering that most students received just one workshop.

There were no significant differences between the intervention and control group students’ confidence talking about money or knowledge of money according to the aspects we asked them about.

The process evaluation found that the Money Workshops are delivered in a positive and effective way. Feedback from over 700 KS4 and post-16 students, and 22 teachers from 20 intervention schools, showed that the workshops were easy to follow, provided new learning and were believed to be highly relevant particularly to students’ futures. Students found the consultants to be highly knowledgeable and presented very clearly. Teachers reported benefits for their own capability to deliver financial education, and that the profile of financial education in the school had increased. The workshops were delivered as intended, with very little adaptation, and were perceived by teachers to be high quality.

Money Workshops are free to schools, and require only minimal time for a PSHE or other relevant teacher to book and set up. The business as usual cost to deliver (without extra evaluation costs) is £200 per workshop.

Points to consider

• Methodological limitations:
  • the use of self-reported attitudes rather than actual behaviour change
  • a lower number of schools than originally modelled, mitigated by running a combined KS4 and post-16 analysis of the primary and secondary outcomes
  • low-response rates to the follow-up survey, although students in the intervention and control groups had similar views at baseline
  • a relatively small input for most students (one one-hour workshop), although there was no relationship between the number of workshops experienced and the primary outcome
  • some drop-out from the workshops (five of the 30 intervention schools did not take part in the workshops)
  • the impact of the trial on The Money Charity’s usual practices regarding booking and organising the workshops, in particular a gap between joining the trial and booking workshops which curtailed somewhat the momentum for schools and consultants to find suitable dates.

Full report

Randomised controlled trial evaluation of The Money Charity’s workshops in Schools - full report