PFS launches financial education website for schools

The website means young people are able to learn more about money matters while they are unable to access educational workshops at school.

The website features four free online sessions, which each last roughly 25 minutes, covering staying safe from scams, moving on from school, my future finance and how to make financial decisions.

The sessions are available on demand via www.mypersonalfinanceskills.org/ and are designed for students aged between 14 and 18-years-old who are studying key stage four and five material at school.

To ensure students have absorbed the information covered in the sessions, student worksheets are also included on the website.

All the learning material has been awarded the Financial Education Quality Mark by Young Money. 

The workshops are based on the Financial Education Planning framework and compliment financial education provision for students in their teens.

Before the coronavirus outbreak, the Personal Finance Society’s My Personal Finance Skills was set to deliver more than twice as many educational sessions for students across the country in the 2020 to 2021 academic year as it did in the 2019 to 2020 academic year.

More than 900 Personal Finance Society members advisers have signed up to be ambassadors of the professional body’s pro-bono initiative ‘My Personal Finance Skills’, which delivers financial education and awareness workshops to schools across the UK utilising gamification to support active engagement.

In the current academic year, more than 400 workshops were delivered to 12,000 students before the coronavirus outbreak resulted in the closure of schools and demand from schools across the country continues to grow.

In the 2020 to 2021 academic year the scheme was set to reach even more pupils as more than 500 sessions were set to take place.

If necessary, these sessions will be rescheduled for later in the academic year with schools also being given the option of whether they would like virtual workshops.

It is hoped the new online sessions will complement the face-to-face workshops, which will be held when government guidance to stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives changes so that schools can once again reopen their doors to pupils.

Keith Richards, chief executive of the Personal Finance Society, said: “We launched My Personal Finance Skills as a pro-bono programme allowing members to demonstrate the professions wider commitment to financial awareness and education by serving to wider community they operate in.

“While in-school workshops are currently on hold due to the ongoing Covid-19 outbreak, the Personal Finance Society has adapted our in-school material to offer students free online financial education.

“We hope teachers, parents and pupils find these online sessions useful in educating the nation’s teenagers about money matters while school buildings remain closed to pupils whose parents aren’t identified as key workers.

“This new consumer-facing website has the potential to expand to incorporate wider information and guidance.”