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George Tsounias on My Personal Finance Skills plans for the new school year

It is safe to say that the past year was quite the challenge for all, and the My Personal Finance Skills programme was no exception. However, Education Champions stepped up to the mark like never before and thanks to their ongoing support, enthusiasm, perseverance and resilience, we continued to deliver and function in a remote setting. As a result, no school was left without their request being fulfilled.

Education Champions helped deliver more than 600 financial education sessions nationwide, reaching 20,000-plus students. That’s more than 20,000 students encountering one of our Education Champions and getting valuable personal finance lessons. What’s more, the feedback from teachers 
and students alike was very positive.  

What teachers say

Some 100% teachers that provided us with feedback either strongly agreed or agreed that students had a better understanding of the financial education topic area after a session run by an Education Champion.

Furthermore, they highly rated our organisation and the content of our sessions.

“Sessions were fantastic and age-appropriate for Key Stage 4”  (Christ the Catholic School)

“All the volunteers were super engaging and inspirational. The organisers were very helpful.”  (Dr Challoner’s High School)

What students say

Delivering more than 90% of the sessions remotely this past year had its fair share of technology challenges, but students certainly appreciated learning from Education Champions. So much so that 97% of students had a better understanding of the topic covered.

“Amazing sessions! Thank you” (Chiltern Academy)

“I liked how the session was interactive rather than just information to read” (Lordswood VI Form)

PFS collaborate with ITN

During the latter part of the academic year, My Personal Finance Skills teamed up with ITN productions to produce a piece around financial wellbeing and our school initiative. With the participation of Education Champions Sue Eadon-Butler, Robert Boland and Aylesford School, the short clip shows the positive impact that the programme has been able to have even via remote learning. You can access the video at:
www.vimeo.com/540634940 or via our website.

Academic Year 2021/2022

For the new academic year, we are introducing our hybrid model of delivery. Where we can, we will resume our popular in-school option. Where this is not possible, we will revert to a remote session. All this is to ensure that students can benefit from our free financial education sessions.

Spread the word today!

This year we are looking to increase our school engagement, so if you have connections with a local school, charity or youth group that could benefit from our free sessions, let us know.

Here’s to another successful academic year of financial education sessions in schools across the UK.

To get in touch, email skills@thepfs.org or visit www.mypersonalfinancekills.org for more information.

George Tsounias is relationship manager of education at the PFS

Image credit | iStock