Government tops up financial literacy teacher funds

In a statement yesterday, the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services Kelly O’Dwyer, announced that the government will commit further funding to expand the delivery of ASIC’s MoneySmart Teaching program over the next four years.

By building teacher capacity, the program provides teachers with the skills and resources to develop stronger financial capabilities in young people, the statement said.

“The new funding agreement will help train significantly more teachers and have a positive impact on a greater number of students and school communities across Australia,” Ms O’Dwyer said.

The continuation of ASIC's MoneySmart Teaching program in schools complements the additional funding of $16 million over four years for ASIC’s financial literacy program announced in the 2017-18 budget, the statement said.

In March, chair of the Australian Government Financial Literacy Board Paul Clitheroe discussed some of the challenges involved in acquiring government funding for financial literacy initiatives.

“We have trouble competing for government money to train teachers – which is fair enough: if you multiply 360,000 odd teachers by $1,000 for the teacher and another $800 which we must pay the school who needs to come up with a replacement teacher whilst the other teacher is training – you're talking hundreds of millions of dollars in training and we can talk about the billions of dollars that this adds to the community but at the end of the day were running budget deficits,” Mr Clitheroe said.

The best way to coach young people in financial literacy is to educate teachers, Mr Clitheroe said.

In March, ifa reported on an example of successful collaboration between advisers and schools.