Schoolchildren will be taught financial literacy

What is investment? How to correctly calculate the family budget and your own financial plan? What loans can be taken, and which ones are dangerous? These and many other “wisdom” from this year will begin to study schoolchildren in grades 1-9.

A separate subject for the study of financial literacy has not yet been provided. It is assumed that students will learn the secrets of the correct handling of money in the lessons of mathematics, the world around them, geography, social science, computer science.

The partner in drawing up the training program was the Central Bank of Russia. Classes will be held in such a way that the children, together with teachers, analyze various financial “cases”, learning in practice how to properly manage money, plan expenses, resist the tricks of scammers, including on the Internet. Moreover, in the primary grades, children will be told how to analyze family income and expenses and teach children to draw up a personal financial plan. High school students will be taught how to assess business risks and avoid various types of financial fraud. In addition, they will be taught how to draw up and fill out some documents on their own – applications, appeals, declarations, powers of attorney.

According to Anna Petrichenko, the mother of sixth-grader Tamila, children really need such lessons.

— We all use plastic credit cards in the family. And they made an additional card for my daughter so as not to give her cash, says Anna. “Even adults find it difficult to control their spending when they use credit cards, and even children don’t understand how to do it at all. Of course, we set a limit for our daughter on daily possible expenses. But sometimes she does not fit into this limit. Therefore, I believe that financial literacy lessons are very necessary at school so that children learn to understand what can be bought for the amount allocated to them, and plan their expenses.

The mother of third-grader Nikolai Yulia Guskova also believes that financial literacy lessons are very important.

“Our son sometimes orders games for himself on the Internet,” Yulia says. – But he does not understand how to look for cheaper offers, choosing the first ones that come across. Of course, we explain to him how to look for the best in terms of price and quality. If this is taught in school, I will be very happy.

Financial literacy training began in 2016. At first it was taught as part of the subject “social studies”. The introduction of such classes in the training program was due to the fact that children themselves are now quite actively buying various goods, and, on the Internet, they use mobile applications and plastic cards from an early age. Without financial literacy, this is very difficult to do.

By the way

The Rabota.ru and SberAvto companies have published a study on how much money schoolchildren’s parents are willing to give their children for pocket money. Thus, 12% of parents believe that amounts from 500 to 1000 rubles will be quite sufficient for children. Almost 6% are ready to give their children from 1,000 to 2,000 rubles. But 3% of parents believe that children should not be given pocket money at all.

Mona Platonov.