Josh Brown is Assistant Principal of approximately three hundred Year 7 to 9 students at Northern Bay, a large multi-campus high school in Victoria. Josh strongly believes that it is part of the role of an educator to ensure that students have a real life understanding of how to manage money.
The importance placed on financial education is replicated by the students, “As part of our commitment to developing student agency, we surveyed the students to gauge their perspective on learning financial literacy at school. They unanimously wanted to learn how to manage – and how to make money!”
Meeting the challenge of providing financial literacy for all
Previously only touched on at the school as part of numeracy and covered in more depth higher up the school in the business and economics strand, Josh and his team were committed to embedding financial life skills for all into the Year 7 and 8 curriculum.
A number of challenges needed to be overcome. Firstly, there was the time pressure. “Every hour is precious at high school, but we integrated it into an inquiry unit which is mapped to the curriculum, and decided to dedicate one hour a week to financial literacy.”
There was also a sense of trepidation amongst the teachers about making financial literacy relevant, and this, combined with Northern Bay’s recent investment in Chromebooks to support their digital classrooms, led Josh to look for an online self-directed platform.
Another Principal recommended Banqer High and it seemed to fit with our digital pedagogy and would make delivering the unit straightforward for the teachers.
Impressive expansions cover a range of learning topics
When we saw the topics covered – renting, jobs, and the share market – we knew it was the real-life experience that both the teachers and our students wanted. Whilst our school has quite a low socio-economic profile and our students have a low level of financial literacy, they want to learn about money. We needed to offer them practical experiences that would capture their enthusiasm.
The school uses Banqer High throughout term two and three with the classroom teacher of each composite Year 7 and 8 class leading the unit, and supporting the high ratio of ESL students at the school.
The response from the teachers has been very positive. They are impressed with the programme, with its real life setting, the ease of use, and the support offered by the Banqer High team and resources.
