To ask the Minister of Education what consideration he has given to improving the financial education provided to pupils in post-primary schools.

Financial capability is a statutory element of the Northern Ireland Curriculum. Schools are required to provide pupils with opportunities to develop a range of skills to promote independence through planning, managing and using resources, across a number of areas of learning.

The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) provide a range of resources to support financial education to pupils at post-primary level. Additional resources have been added to the provision each year, over a number of years. All resources can be found within the Financial Capability Post-Primary section of the CCEA website.

CCEA has also worked in collaboration with the Consumer Council on behalf of the ScamwiseNI partnership to develop an online resource called ‘Scamwise’.

Over the last five years, CCEA has developed a strong working relationship with Young Enterprise Northern Ireland (YENI) and the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) to promote financial capability and develop resources for teachers to use.

For example, in 2023, YENI developed a Teacher Professional Learning Financial Education programme to support teachers in the delivery of financial education across all stages of the Northern Ireland Curriculum; this was funded by MaPS and aligned to the Department’s Strategy for Teacher Professional Learning – ‘Learning Leaders’.