St Patrick's College introduced financial literacy for the first time this year, folding it into a new Year 8 subject. Head of Digital Learning, Nicolas Consiglio explains how Banqer shaped the unit, and what happened once the boys started checking their bank balances between classes.
Building financial literacy into a new Year 8 subject
St Patrick's is an all-boys Catholic school on the north side of Brisbane, teaching students from Year five through to Year 12 in the Edmund Rice tradition. This year the College introduced Active Citizenship and Enterprise (ACE) for Year 8, a subject combining economics, business, civics and citizenship.
ACE had already been running successfully with Year 9 for several years, and St Patrick's decided to extend the program to Year 8. Prior to this, financial literacy had no dedicated place in the curriculum. Instead, it was delivered through the College's weekly formation program, covering everything from study skills to anti bullying to reconciliation week, to occasional Year 9 guest speaker sessions.
The College's Dean of Teaching and Learning had previously used Banqer and suggested it as a starting point.
We started looking into it, were very happy with what we saw, decided to trial the program and ultimately it proved to be a very, very good decision because it was wildly successful.
Setting up Banqer across the Year 8 faculty
Nic was responsible for implementing the subject. Nic's dual roles as Year 8 teacher and Head of Digital Learning lined up neatly for the job. Onboarding the wider team went smoothly, with built-in oversight making it easy to spot and support anyone who needed a hand. Tech confidence varied across the team, but never became a barrier. Even those who weren't as confident with tech were able to move forward very successfully within Banqer.
Preparation happened in a single faculty meeting before term one, where Nic walked the Year 8 teachers through the platform and how to pass login codes on to students. From there, login codes went out through Schoolbox, the College's existing learning management system.
The faculty settled on a written report as the assessment item, mapped it against the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority criteria, then built the unit around Banqer's worksheets and videos, aligning everything with their own pedagogical frameworks. A lot of the resources that Banqer provided were really useful in this regard. Much of the guesswork was greatly eased by the curriculum documents that Banqer provided.
Banqer's collaborative features, like students owning or renting a house together, let the faculty build group work directly into the unit. Its worksheets also gave teachers a way to check in on progress. It was all really nice to reflect on and see the students learning and engaging,
says Nic. The volume of content also meant faster finishers could progress, with the faculty allocating extra activities and questions as extension work.
How Banqer drove student engagement in the classroom
For Nic, the clearest measure of student engagement was hearing how far it travelled outside the classroom. Parents started reporting that their sons were coming home wanting to talk about superannuation, banking and interest rates. Other teachers noticed it too, with students bringing it into unrelated classes.
The conversations that kickstarted around the school were really good. I don't think those conversations would have happened if we weren't using Banqer.
Banqer's built in scenarios kept students engaged through problem solving, seeding unexpected events like medical or insurance emergencies into the experience. It probably made them realise very quickly that having a contingency in place is a really important skill moving forward.
Nic used those moments to draw a line to real life. Whenever something happened I would try and connect it to an experience that I've had, where I've said, 'this actually happens in the real world', and especially as you have kids, all of a sudden something comes up and that costs you money.
The leaderboard and check-ins gave the class its own rhythm, with some students getting themselves promoted quickly by nailing daily check-ins. It was their most pressing concern, 'I have to check in for Banqer otherwise I'm not going to get my promotion.'
Nic used that appetite as leverage, trading finished classwork for time in Banqer. It greatly incentivised the work in class, which was really nice.
Competition for the top spot came with its own lesson, after one student spent his way to the top and straight into fifty thousand dollars of debt. We'd put up the leaderboard and they'd go, wait, wait, and go on and buy some more credits. Check, sir, check now.
A strong first year for financial literacy at St Patrick's
Nic points to the simulative nature of Banqer as the reason the subject worked at all. It's a really engaging way to take something that maybe isn't the most exciting curriculum for thirteen-year-old boys. The gamification within Banqer…I don't even think they realised they were learning half the time.
Head of Faculty, Briellen Bagdonas adds: It was easy to use and fully resourced. What can we do to make the lives of teachers that little bit easier? Having all of those activities, the powerpoints, the worksheets, it was a really big time saver, and it felt good to be able to go to the teachers and say, 'you've got this as a term one unit for a subject we've never had at our College before.'
High student engagement and low teacher workload are what made Banqer's first year at St Patrick's so successful. St Patrick's is now watching how this year's Year 8 cohort carries the experience into Year 9, where ACE continues with a heavier focus on economics, business and citizenship.
