Seeking comment: Is Britain failing children on financial education?

These figures are embarrassing, not just for schools but for the system as a whole. Only 6% think schools shape how children see money, and a quarter of parents feel unqualified to teach it, so kids fall through a gap nobody owns. Financial education needs to start in primary school, covering budgeting, saving, debt and needs versus wants from around age seven, building to credit, tax and investing by GCSE age. Estonia and the Netherlands sit above the OECD average on financial literacy because it runs through maths and everyday lessons for years, not one bolted on PSHE module. Wales and Scotland already make it statutory in primary schools, England still does not. Schools cannot do this alone and parents should not be left to either. It belongs alongside English and maths as a core subject, taught from an early age, because children confident with money are more likely to build something with their lives rather than lean on the state. The UK simply is not doing enough.

The UK has never had a coherent financial education curriculum, so the burden falls on parents who were never taught this stuff themselves. Expecting hard-pressed parents to build resilience in their kids, without proper tools or a solid school baseline, just recycles anxiety and low capability down the generations, hitting lower-income households hardest. Money habits form by age seven, so secondary school is too late. Primary education should start with needs versus wants, then build into budgeting, tax, interest, credit and scam awareness. Denmark weaves personal finance into early learning; over half of US states now mandate high school courses on it. Japan's Central Council for Financial Services Information runs a structured, nationwide curriculum from early childhood, rooted in the social context of spending and saving. Without mandatory primary coverage and proper teacher training, Britain will keep failing young people on basic financial readiness, as it has for generations.

As a former Chair of Trustees at a multi-academy trust, I believe financial literacy must start in primary school and continue through secondary school. Early education can shape a child’s relationship with money for life, and this topic deserves the same importance as other subjects. But it cannot be left solely to schools; parents and families need support too. Schools can help bridge that gap by bringing practical financial education into their communities, including parents. Many financial advisers would gladly volunteer their time to run accessible workshops. We should do far more to connect this expertise with pupils, parents and local communities.

As a parent and somebody who runs a finance business, I think it is unfair to expect every family to provide financial education when more than a quarter of parents lack confidence themselves.

Parents will always shape their children’s attitudes towards money, but schools must provide a common foundation. Otherwise, financial confidence—and disadvantage—will pass from one generation to the next.

Children can learn about saving, budgeting and the difference between needs and wants at primary school. By secondary school, that should extend to payslips, tax, interest, credit, mortgages, pensions and scams.

It must be practical and repeated, rather than one lesson they soon forget. In parts of the US, financial education follows defined standards covering earning, spending, saving, investing, credit and risk. Britain can learn from that structured approach.

Every child will need to manage money. Preparing them for it should be considered an essential part of their education.

The embarrassing thing isn't that a quarter of parents lack confidence teaching their children about money. It's that we've built a system that expects them to fill the gap.

Financial education can't depend on growing up in a home where someone understands pensions, mortgages and debt. Schools exist to give children what they might not get at home, and money should be no different.

It should start around five: not about investing, but understanding that money is earned, it's finite, and every spending decision involves a trade off. Because money isn't really about maths, it's about behaviour, and behaviours form early.

By the time a child leaves school, they should understand a payslip, how a credit card works, and why starting a pension at 20 beats starting at 40.

Denmark and the Netherlands show it can be done. Schools provide the foundations; parents make them real. The aim shouldn't be to raise five year old investors, just financially confident adults.

Quite simply, YES! I approached several local schools, including my old school and offered to come in, completely free of charge and provide some future financial budgeting sessions for the pupils. All schools that i approached ignored me. It appears schools are only interested in completing tick box exercises and ensuring the bare minimum is done, my feelings were that the schools could not care less about the future lives of their pupils and prioritise their own targets

The 6% figure isn't shocking. It's honest. Children learn money the way they learn language ie by copying the people closest to them. The real story is the 26% of parents who lack confidence, and the reason is uncomfortable. Nobody taught them either, and they've spent their adult lives in an economy built to stop them saving. Financial capability, stripped back, is the ability to wait giving up something now for something better later. That's a habit, not a spreadsheet skill. Yet around 60% of UK GDP is household spending. Buy now, pay later sits on every checkout. Credit is sold as freedom. Every app and advert a child sees is designed to shrink the gap between wanting and having. Then we act surprised they can't save. Children should handle real money from the moment they can count, and by secondary school learn compounding, debt and tax through their own choices. But the honest lesson is that a classroom can't fix a culture that never says no