What they don't want to teach you in school...

"A GCSE in financial services is set to be dropped from schools in Northern Ireland, due to low uptake and "overlap" with other exams.”

The above is an excerpt from the BBC website on Wed 29th Oct 2008.

It does beg the question “will our young people leaving school at 16, 18 or 21 ever get to grips with understanding the fundamentals of how to manage money?

Sadly, I fear not.

This decision to drop financial services from the Northern Ireland schools curriculum is, I suggest likened to stopping spelling lessons, as MS Word has spell check, or even abandoning cooking lessons, as there are plenty of fast food outlets around.

The frightening thing about the Northern Ireland Education Ministers decision to drop the GCSE in financial services is that it is based on a low take up of the subject. The chair of a Northern Ireland Board of Local Governors said, quite rightly, the decision was disappointing.

It’s not the fault of the Education Minister; it’s the fault and therefore the responsibility of the parents of children who don’t receive a basic grounding of money and its value at home.

Being proficient at mathematics or economics, does mean proficiency with money.

Most students are broke for a good many years after college, paying of their student loans.

Many people are living weekly wage to weekly wage. There is even a loan firm called Payday loans to help the weekly paid bridge the gap from being broke until payday.

The frightening thing is this. In 10 or 20 years time, our teenage students will be running both government departments and commercial organisations; one wonders what sort of money management skills they will have acquired at school or college.

I said a few blogs ago that we have been here before: if we don’t ensure our young people get a solid grounding in money management and more importantly, how the world and money works, we could be here again.