When St Patrick's College in Wellington decided to make financial literacy a core part of its Year 9 programme, it wasn't because the curriculum required it. It was because Rowan saw it coming and wanted the school to be ready.
Building financial literacy into the Year 9 curriculum
St Patrick's College is a Catholic boys' school in Wellington, drawing around 740 students from right across the region. The push for financial literacy at St Patrick's came from multiple directions. The school was running a popular Year 9 option class with a financial focus, and a parent survey had surfaced clear community interest. When the government began signalling that financial literacy would become compulsory, Head of the Social Science Department, Rowan Pearson, thought Let's get ahead of the game. Take it out of the option classes and make it something we do for everyone.
Before Banqer, financial concepts appeared in fragments across the programme: budgeting in a Year 9 unit called Flying Solo
, economic ideas embedded in social studies topics, some financial standards in Year 13. It was never really a big standalone presence in social studies,
Rowan says. But now it is.
The timing made practical sense too. Learning about interest and financial concepts overlaps directly with the numeracy standards Year 9 students sit for the first time in Year 10 or 11.
Integrating Banqer ahead of the curriculum refresh
With a curriculum refresh on the horizon and nothing yet finalised, Rowan's approach was deliberate in its simplicity. "Honestly, when we started, we didn't overthink it. We looked at what we were doing, decided we could fit it in, moved a few things around, and just went for it.”
The government wanted us to be teaching financial literacy. Banqer was the best tool.
The refresh actually became a reason to move faster rather than wait. We thought, we're going to have to do this anyway, and we'd rather have some competency in what we're doing before it becomes compulsory. There's going to be so much other change with the curriculum refresh. If the financial literacy stuff is already in place, that's one less thing to overhaul.
A lot of it was about the pre-work,” Rowan explained. Following a [demo](https://banqer.co/nz/high/demo) with the Banqer team, she set up staff meetings and Tuesday morning check-ins to keep everyone moving through the modules together. She leaned heavily on Banqer's teacher resources, downloading worksheets and adapting materials to fit her teaching sequence.
I would have been stuffed without them, basically," she says, only half joking.
Student engagement and real-world thinking
Once students were on the platform, the engagement was immediate. 'Are we going on Banqer today?' That was a common question from the whole class. They loved the quizzes, they were competitive about the money, and there was a big hullabaloo when it came to the renting. Who's going to be in whose flat, what's going on with friendships, all of that.
The concepts landed alongside the competition. They really got into the idea of bank accounts, credit cards vs debit cards, and I think it helped them think about the kinds of careers they might want to pursue, because they could see what different jobs paid.
One of the more unexpected observations was how cautious students were, even with nothing real at stake. They were very risk averse. They didn't want to spend their money - they wanted to stay at the top of that leaderboard.
That competitive streak wasn't universal, though. Rowan talks about a student who'd become disengaged towards the end of the year, someone for whom showing up to school was already a challenge. She sourced a borrowed device so he could join every social studies lesson. He was doing the quizzes and some of the work, looking at jobs, exploring careers. He never got very far through the platform, but he was engaged with it.
Having that basic financial literacy, especially for students who are going to go out and get a job early, is so important.
She shared something broader she notices about her students: "Because we're a boys school, a lot of them want to be professional athletes. Banqer helps them think about having a Plan B, too.”
What works and what to do differently
Running Banqer in Term 4, crammed in at the end of the year, meant disruptions and a programme that didn't get the time it deserved. I don't feel we did it justice,
Rowan says. This year it moved to Term 2, with eleven weeks set aside.
She'd also rebalance the ratio of worksheet time to platform time. I think I probably spent too much time on the worksheets rather than actually being on the platform.
Her plan is to turn the ones she wants into a single printed booklet, used alongside the platform rather than ahead of it.
But ask her whether she'd recommend it, and there's no hesitation: "Definitely do it. All the resources are there, you can pick and mix, you can adapt the timeframes. It's teaching students real-life financial skills in a fun and engaging way, where they can think about things they wouldn't normally think about until much later in life. Even now some of them are thinking about Afterpay, student loans, credit cards. What interest actually means, how much more money they have to pay back.”
She adds, “You do need to invest the time to go through everything yourself first. But everything is there, you just have to make the time. It's definitely worthwhile."
