A private member’s bill tabled by a Plaid Cymru AM will aim to challenge and overcome longstanding economic issues in Wales by giving primary importance to financial education in schools and financial inclusion in our communities.
The Financial Education and Inclusion (Wales) Bill, which is being introduced by Bethan Jenkins, Plaid Cymru’s South Wales West AM, includes a series of radical measures such as making law the teaching of financial education, a business-and-industry-led approach to developing relevant content, and making public online access in local authority-run buildings such as libraries completely free of charge – a world first in legally recognising the internet as a right.
The Bill has been drawn up as a response to Wales’ ongoing 100-year-old legacy of deindustrialisation as well as more recent problems such as the recession of the loss of jobs to economies where pay levels are lower. It uses existing powers to combat these issues and has the support of scores of organisations and hundreds of people.
Bethan said:
“This Bill is primarily designed with two aims: to produce future generations of financially competent school leavers; and to help people, particularly in deprived areas, who are facing new challenges such as budgeting for the first time as Universal Credit is rolled out.
“In my region, I can think of half a dozen good employers over the past five years who have moved their factories abroad. We can’t compete on wages, so we have to look for other ways. A financially capable workforce adds to the bottom line and would build Wales’ reputation as a country serious about business, transforming the way the world looks at us.
“It would, of course, help everyone to manage their finances better, and so we’ve included measures there to help people who are no longer in education. It is no surprise that most housing associations, for example, put a great deal of effort into improving the financial competency of their tenants because of the costly alternative, so a consequence of this Bill would be savings to our hard-pressed services, too.”
The Bill’s main aims are:
- A statutory duty to teach financial education in Welsh schools;
- A duty on Welsh ministers to consult “relevant experts” when developing financial education content;
- Welsh ministers to report to the National Assembly on the progress of financial education in schools;
- Local authorities to ensure – as corporate parents – that looked-after children receive financial education;
- Local authorities must publish financial inclusion strategies on how they will improve the economic well-being of people living in their areas;
- That strategy must be revised every five years and reported upon annually;
- Free access to online financial education through libraries and other public access PCs;
- Local authorities must signpost advice about financial management, through its website or other sources;
- Local authorities must support students with advice about financial management where necessary.
Bethan added:
“This Bill complements the Welsh Government’s work involving the Literacy and Numeracy Framework, and the introduction of separated numeracy and mathematics GCSEs. Therefore, as budget has been allocated for this already, I see the main associated cost – that of providing teachers with necessary training – as mostly accounted for.
“But I believe that we need to go further with financial education. A Freedom of Information request conducted by my office found that in 81 secondary schools across Wales (around a third of the total), the number of hours of financial education taught in mathematics and PSE from ages 11 to 16 ranged from 270 to just six hours. This represents a postcode lottery and we can’t have this uncertainty for our children.
“Lastly, the Bill also fits with stated Welsh Local Government Association calls for a switch to preventative spend, putting focus on fixing the root cause of many people’s problems, improving their lives as well as helping local authorities and other public services in Wales.”
