we attended a financial education class at college

As part of financial education week, 4th grade students are invited to validate their “Educfi passport”, awareness of money issues tested since 2019 and supposed to be generalized. Report in Hellemmes, near Lille.

How to manage a budget? What is a credit? What does it mean to save? So many questions addressed in a financial education module, carried out in March in colleges. 4th grade students are invited to validate their “Educfi passport”, as part of financial education week, which takes place from Monday March 18 to Friday March 22. Tested since 2019 in a few establishments, this awareness has gradually expanded and is supposed to be generalized for the first time this year to the 750,000 4th grade students throughout France.

In Hellemmes, very close to Lille, Monday March 18, it was the very first hour of financial education for these 13-year-old middle school students. They are questioned about “what is a budget?”. “It’s what we can afford to spend.”, replies a student. In this college, two mathematics teachers have been leading this module for three years. They were trained in this budgetary and financial specialty by the Banque de France, which designed the system.

In this module, mathematics is never far away. “We dealt with relative numbers, reminds a teacher, when the sign of a relative number is positive, it is greater than zero.” The students participate, and the interventions are sometimes even surprising. When the students were asked how they earn some money for themselves, one of them replied: “Me, I do cryptocurrency”. “I started to be interested in gold because I saw that its rate either increased or fell, said another. So I told myself that it would be much more interesting to buy it when the rate was low and to be able to resell it when it was much higher…”

Is it appropriate to talk about money at school?

However, there is no consensus among teachers on the “Educfi Passport”. Some fear a moralizing approach which would describe good and bad behavior, outside of any context of income or social inequalities. But in this Hellemmes class, the young people feel rather interested in these questions of everyday life. “It’s good to learn this in college because it’s better explained by a teacher who is used to explaining things than by your family,” assures a student. “It can be half and half, nuance another. JI think we can talk about it at home just like we can talk about it at school.” “One day, it will be up to us to take care of our family and we must prepare for it”assures yet another schoolboy.

“I find it interesting because it can help us for the future.”

a 4th grade student

at franceinfo

Students who are usually very withdrawn during traditional math lessons reveal themselves during the module, notes the teacher: “As soon as we talk about money, teenagers are immediately interested. I am surprised that today some who have very low results have spoken up much more than usual.”

For him, it’s not just school that teaches young people how to manage money, but it’s important: “It’s true that we can talk about it since we are supposed to train the future citizens of tomorrow. My only concern is that it takes time and that the program is busy. Additional resources should be provided,” advocates the mathematics teacher. At the end of the two or three hours of this awareness-raising, a quiz is offered to students to try to obtain their famous “Educfi passport”.