Erica Stanford: Education Minister on the Government's new curriculum update designed to teach kids about money

Another Government curriculum refresh is aiming to give school kids more grasp of money management.

The Education Minister's making financial literacy a compulsory topic for years one to ten.

The Government is teaming up with financial organisations, banks, and charities for lessons on investment and taxes.

Erica Stanford says kids will learn a small dose each year, increasing in complexity as they get older - in order to build up financial skills over their time at school.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Budgeting, taxes, investments, and insurance. They're just some of the
things that are going to be taught very soon in
New Zealand schools. Education Minister Erica Stanford says this will
help build lifelong financial skills and children as early as
five years old. And she's with us now, Erica, Hello,
good afternoon. So if we're popping this in, what are
we popping out to make space?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Well, financial literacy should be a strand in the social
science's curriculum. So at the moment, in the social sciences
curriculum you have toto in New Zealand History, it's supposed
to also include geography and financial literacy, and that's where
we will be popping it in. But it will be
all the way up, so a small dose every year

(00:40):
to make sure we're building capability across a students time
at school.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Look, I feel so cynical about this. I feel like
parents should be teaching the kids this so that we
don't have to teach them in schools because schools already crammed.
Am I being unreasonable?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, there are lots of things that parents should be
doing and unfortunately we're having to pick up at school,
like sex education, like oral literacy. I've got young young
people at EC who are turning up who are five
years old or four years old, who have the language
of a two year old. And so there is a
part of this that is on parents and that we

(01:14):
do need to help parents understand that you need to
talk to your children to improve oral language skills. You
do need to talk to your children about financial literacy
if you are able. But we have to remember that.
You know, the reason that our budgeting services are overwhelmed
is because a lot of adults, in fact, eighty four
percent of them say that they never received any financial
literacy training themselves, and so it is an intergenerational thing

(01:38):
that we need to build capacity. So the schools do
need to play a part in this, and parents have
called for it for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
You make a fair point, Erica, Thank you. I really appreciate.
Erica stand for the education minister. So there is a
bunch of stuff we have to teach kids that don't
get toward school. For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive,
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