Schools should teach children more about how money works
- narmin nahidi
- 3 days ago
- 1 min read
How can the UK be one of the world’s leading centers of finance and accounting, yet still leave many children to grow up without understanding how money actually works?
This is not a small curriculum gap. It is a social and economic failure.
We teach children mathematics, but often do not show them how that mathematics shapes real financial decisions: saving, borrowing, interest rates, inflation, debt, pensions, tax, mortgages, and financial risk.
Then, years later, we expect them to make serious decisions about student loans, credit cards, rent, employment, pensions, and mortgages.
That is not fair. And it is not efficient.
Financial literacy should not be a privilege passed on only in financially confident households. It should be part of basic education from the early stages of schooling.
Children do not need to become finance specialists. They need to understand consequences, choices, trade-offs, and how small decisions compound over time.
A country that helped build modern finance should not allow financial education to remain an afterthought.
I discuss this in my new article for The Conversation:
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