Martin Lewis says kids should be given apps to learn money skills at school
Martin Lewis has accused the Government of a financial education "farce" as he urged it to create "apps and games" for children to learn vital money skills in schools.
The MoneySavingExpert founder hit out at ministers for failing to fund resources for personal finance lessons as he revealed he was forced to cough up his own money to fund the first ever textbook on the subject. He urged ministers to be inventive in teaching kids about money issues by talking about mobile phones or travel insurance.
Speaking to MPs on the Commons Education Committee, Mr Lewis said there are "zero resources" going into teaching financial literacy and said it was crucial for kids to understand the subject as the cost of living bites. He said too often it is "assumed" that kids know about pay checks, student finance, tax code numbers, or that high interest rates are a bad thing not a good thing. In 2021, Mr Lewis funded 350,000 copies and free online downloads of financial textbook Your Money Matters for schools.
The book teaches how to save, budget, or borrow money as well as about student finance, pensions, investments, benefits, gambling, debt, insurance, security and fraud. But Mr Lewis has demanded ministers consider ways to digitise financial education, a suggestion he said was previously slapped down.
"We want ongoing teacher training we want to proper textbooks for schools we want apps and games and things people can play that give financial education," he said. "We need a rounded funded way to do this and we're talking low numbers millions of pounds. We're not talking hundreds of millions." The frustrated financial journalist added: "But maybe the state could pay this time and not me."
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Mr Lewis pleaded with the Department for Education to provide training for teachers. "The one counter argument is that it's a parent's responsibility. Well, that's great for my daughter because it'll go pretty well to be fair. But what you do is perpetuate a cycle of the 'financial knows' and the 'financial know nots,'" he said.
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"Ultimately to do this properly we need a universalised financial education that is supporting every school that is on the curriculum, that is taught by the professionals in teaching - who are the teachers - and who are properly resourced and are properly educated themselves and get ongoing teacher training to keep up with it. And I do not believe the resources are being put in place to do that."
Mr Lewis was critical of the Government for relying on him to fund a textbook on the subject for children. He said: "I'm not the Government. I'm a private individual. I actually have a substantial political objection that a private individual should be asked to pay for a textbook to go into schools... I don't understand why I was asked to pay for it. On a practical basis I was told quite succinctly it was not going to happen unless I funded it so I funded it over my own objections."
He said the DfE also told him it was not allowed to support the book if he went via a publisher so was also forced to "fund the publishing and the printing" too. "If we didn't self-publish we couldn't get the Department for Education to do the letter it did to schools supporting the textbook," he said. "Forgive me but what a bloody farce. Is that not just ridiculous?"
Mr Lewis said he ensured the contract for the textbook, which was handed to Young Money, made clear he did not want "editorial control" of the content and criticised the Government for leaving the decision to him in the first place. "I could've put my stance into schools. I could've used it as a piece of propaganda. I could've done all of those things. That doesn't seem right to me," he said.
Asked about financial education in schools, Schools Minister Damian Hinds said: “There’s more than there used to be and we’d like there to be more. There’s this ambition for two million more children and young people to be getting a meaningful financial education by the end of the decade. I support that.
“I do think it’s really important that children leave school with a firm grasp of the knowledge and the life skills that will help them to thrive and protect themselves in adult life, and financial literacy, financial capability - it goes by many names - is clearly a really important part of that.”
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