Secondary education

The new secondary curriculum has three statutory aims. They reflect the Every Child Matters (ECM) outcomes, including achieving economic wellbeing, and require schools to plan a curriculum to enable all young people to become:

• successful learners who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve
• confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives
• responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society.

Personal finance education contributes to all three aims.

To give schools greater flexibility to tailor learning to their pupils’ needs, there is less prescribed subject content in the new programmes of study.

However, the new curriculum balances subject knowledge with the key concepts and processes that underlie the discipline of each subject.
The revised programmes of study share a common format:

• An importance statement that describes why the subject matters and how it can contribute to the aims
• Key concepts that define the big ideas that underpin the subject
• Key processes – the essential skills of the subject
• Range and content setting out the breadth of subject matter from which teachers should draw to develop knowledge, concepts and skills
• Curriculum opportunities that enhance and enrich learning, including making links to the wider curriculum.

This common format makes it easier to see links between subjects. Several subjects share key concepts and processes; curriculum opportunities highlight the potential for links between subjects; and dimensions such as enterprise, creativity, and cultural understanding and diversity can be used to cut across the curriculum.

The new framework retains the best of the past while offering increased opportunity to design learning that develops the wider skills for life and learning. It also links to the major ideas and challenges that face individuals and  society as a whole.

Within the new curriculum, the programmes of study for economic wellbeing and financial capability within PSHE education and the programmes of study for citizenship and mathematics all make explicit reference to money and financial capability.

The DCSF (now DfE) has now also published new guidance on financial capability in the secondary curriculum: key stages 3 and 4.  This explains what financial capability is and where it fits in the new secondary curriculum.  It also covers questions like 'what are we trying to achieve?' 'how do we organise learning for financial capability?' and 'how well are we achieving our aims?'.