20 May 2025
Tony Dolphin reveals how St Albans Citizens Advice is teaching children in the district important financial skills for their futures.
Poor financial literacy is a widely-recognised societal problem. According to some studies, up to 23 million people in the UK struggle with some aspects of their financial affairs.
Other studies suggest only a third of children can recall learning about money at school. Financial literacy is an essential life skill, yet many children have limited opportunities to learn about it in a practical way.
Citizens Advice St Albans District (CASTAD) supports hundreds of people every year who are struggling with personal debt and budgeting issues, problems that are often exacerbated by a lack of personal money management skills. However, as well as helping people with their problems, CASTAD is committed to empowering individuals with the knowledge and skills they need to navigate everyday challenges. Prevention of money problems in the future is as important to them as solving money issues once they occur. When resources are available, therefore, they are also committed to improving financial literacy.
As part of this work, thanks to the generous support from the Harpenden Building Society, in the current school year they have been providing, free of charge, money management workshops for Year 5 and Year 6 pupils in local schools. The response to these sessions has been very positive.
In these workshops, children receive a (notional) lump sum of money and must decide how to budget, work, save, spend, borrow, take risks, and avoid financial scams to be the one with the most money at the end of the session.
The approach is games-based because young children are more likely to be engaged if they are having fun while they learn. Games are combined with short money lessons where key learning objectives are discussed in a Q & A format.
One game involves simulating real life ‘work’ by requiring the children to do simple gym exercises and paying them a notional amount for each exercise done. Pupils earn money while they work and, as in real life, are asked to take breaks in between exercises.
Another game involves saving money in a bank. Children are taught the beneficial impact of compound interest (when your money earns interest, and then that interest earns even more interest over time). In other words, they are shown that over the long-term savings grow like a “snowball” rolling down a hill.
Other games involve taking risks. Children are asked to choose between low-risk and high-risk options and thus learn about when it is appropriate to take risk, especially if skill and not luck is involved. Learning to avoid risk when the odds are not in your favour is another key objective of the programme.
At the end of the game sessions, children are asked to add up how much money they have made (or lost) and the winner gets a small prize. Through these games, they experience real-world financial choices in a safe and engaging way. Their learning helps prevent financial difficulties later in life by laying the foundations for informed decision-making.
So far, almost 600 children have benefitted from 20 separate workshops and the general level of engagement with the games and enthusiasm has been high.
Class teachers have also been impressed. A typical observation is: “I just wanted to say a massive thank you for the workshops you have completed in Year 5 and Year 6 over the last couple of days.
“The workshops were amazing, and the children learnt a lot. It was lovely to see how engaged they all were. Please let me know if you run any other workshops for primary as we would be keen to do more with primary aged children” (Samuel Ryder Academy)
Many of the schools already visited have asked CASTAD back for repeat sessions and, thanks to the local primary school grapevine, other schools have also expressed a strong interest in hosting workshops in the future. There is, therefore, a long waiting list for future sessions.
However, there is no guarantee that CASTAD will be able to run sessions in the future. Few people realise that it is an independent charity which receives some funding from local government, but not enough to cover even half of its annual costs.
Its services are provided by local staff and volunteers for local people free of charge, but they can only be provided if it can raise more money from other sources.
Specifically, it needs to attract additional funding for the coming year if it is to offer more free, high-quality money management workshops that schools in the St Albans
district are actively requesting. Securing these funds would ensure that more children have access to essential financial education, helping to improve their financial literacy and reducing the risk of them getting into financial problems in their adult lives.
If you can help, contact CASTAD on bureau@castad.org.uk or call direct on 01727 859565 or 07753 854010.
