High quality, basic economics at school could be the answer to all our problems
We think compulsory PSHE is the starting point.
NOTE: On Monday 12th February at 11:59pm, a government consultation on both the statutory nature, and the contents of PSHE, closes. Please read our recommendations here on how to respond — we highly recommend you submit a response.
With the generous support of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW), we’re incredibly excited to announce the launch of our latest project at Economy, ‘Bringing Economics into Schools’ — providing a basic education of economics in schools, and giving young people the means to understand the world they are growing up in.
Young people want it…
For the last year, we’ve been joining teachers in the classroom testing out how young people feel about economics.
The thing that amazed us the most was the consistency in the excitement we saw in young people talking about the economy.
It shouldn’t be as surprising as it felt. Economics is about life. When done properly, the subject comes alive — young people are empowered to think about their futures in a way that connects with things and conversations around them in a way they’ve never been encouraged to before.
Yet as the age in the room increases, so does the level of anxiety. Teenagers are suddenly concerned about employment, housing and debt. They can’t put their finger on why — they just know that something, somewhere is affecting their future.
Aware of this anxiety and gap in their knowledge, teenagers ask to be taught about this stuff — Ofsted cites one young person as saying “we don’t learn how to grow up”, and a recent call from Youth Parliament was that a curriculum for life that included economics education.
…and adults do too
When we talk to adults about the economy, the picture is even bleaker. They won’t talk to you at all, or they’ll cite their own intelligence as a reason they can’t discuss the subject. Triggered by this aversion, adults consistently call for a basic economics education to be taught in school.
So that’s what we’re calling for. Launched last week, our campaign has four main aims: to provide leadership in high quality resources for a basic education; to make teaching of basic economics compulsory in schools; to support the profession in the delivery of excellent teaching; and to engage a wider body of stakeholders to support this cause.
Leadership of resources
Some kind of economics has been on the curriculum (in a non-compulsory fashion) in various guises for some time now, but resources vary greatly in both quality and approach: even where the teaching is good, we aren’t preparing young people for an adult life in the economy in a consistent way.
The truth is, there’s no real obvious way of teaching economics in schools. Perceived as a huge and complex subject, teachers can understandably feel ill-equipped to teach it, and without any background in it themselves, how can they tackle complex questions from students? But the confusion lies in the misconception that we should boil down the degree level stuff until its palatable for KS2, 3, and 4. We shouldn’t. Instead, we simply need to prepare young people for the kind of economics they’re going to hear about in day-to-day life as adults. We don’t need to train all young people to be professional economists — just citizen economists.
So we’re adopting a user-led approach. Supported by BlackRock Philanthropy, we’ve already piloted a series of workshops in schools across London, and we’ll be building on these, testing methods and programmes with young people that experiment with delivering the PSHE and Citizenship curriculum objectives in ways that make young people feel confident and able to interpret and form opinions about economics as they enter adulthood.
We have a growing body of research around how adults feel about economics, and a commitment to delivering a plural economics that’s fit for the 21st century as championed by our sister charity Rethinking Economics. We believe we can lead the way in creating resources that will enable teachers to deliver a rock-solid economics education that leaves young people confidently answering, “What is the economy… and what’s it got to do with me?”.
Statutory nature of basic economics teaching
We think it’s excellent that the E in PSHE stands for economics. We don’t think it’s excellent that PSHE is not compulsory. There is now simply too much evidence that a high quality teaching of PSHE is better not only for pupils but teachers too, and that the compulsory status would improve its delivery.
We are encouraging as many of those who share our conviction on the importance of economics education as possible to respond to the public consultation on PSHE, closing on Monday 12th February 2018, at 11:59pm. Moving forward, we’ll be doing all we can to ensure that the government’s current proposals to make PSHE statutory do go ahead.
It’s fantastic that the other elements within the subject, including Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) and online and offline safety for example, get curriculum time. But economics can often be forgotten. We’ve already seen that there’s real demand for this subject, but we also firmly believe that if we create a world where institutions and citizens use the same straight-forward language to discuss economic matters, economics has the ability to become an incredibly powerful tool to solve the world’s problems.
Preparation of the profession
Teachers are by far the most vital stakeholder in this process. We’ve been working with TeachFirst Ambassadors, the EBEA (a professional network of economics teachers, who have been tackling this challenge for some time), and other professional education institutions to make sure we leave no stone unturned in understanding the efforts of teachers in the past. One thing is clear — that some greater level of central coordination is needed. We believe that the statutory status will help achieve this by bringing recognition and attention. On some level, we’d argue that teachers approaching the subject without a background in it could actually be a benefit to delivering learning, given they won’t have got used to the same unhelpful jargon much of the economics profession has come to rely on.
If the statutory nature of PSHE is enforced, schools will be required to deliver PSHE from September 2019.
We want to build support systems in schools up and down the country, providing resources for peer-to-peer training, and signposting teachers to the best resources there are. The Economics Network for example advocates some brilliant ideas like using universities with economics expertise as hubs to support front-line teachers in primary and secondary schools.
Wider stakeholder engagement
We’re not alone in our wishes to give young people a basic economics education… which is lucky, because we obviously couldn’t do this alone. It’s vital that the profession works together. We’ve been working with the likes of The Bank of England and others to ensure that, as much as possible, the teaching and economics professions pool resources and expertise to ensure that young people leave school fully prepared for their life in the economy.
It’s important that economics profession continues to be self critical, particularly in relation to amplifying the voice of the many schools of thought and approaches to economics Rethinking Economics is campaigning to bring into the mainstream.
We have a lot of work on our hands, but we’re excited to get started. And our first week has been the busiest yet. If you’re not yet convinced why it’s so important to respond to the current government consultation closing Monday 12th Feb, take a listen to our radio interview with Paul Ross on TalkRadio earlier this week.
