Education for economic and financial literacy in Victorian secondary schools
La Trobe research is helping strengthen economic and financial literacy education in Victorian schools by identifying barriers to effective teaching and supporting targeted professional development for teachers.
Professor Suzanne O’Keefe, Associate Professor Buly Cardak. Dr David Walker. Dr Yen Dan Tong
Research conducted at La Trobe Business School with the support of the Victorian Commercial Teachers Association (VCTA) has identified several factors contributing to the compromised delivery of economic and financial literacy within schools. These include a lack of resources, a crowded curriculum, and inadequate training.
Although all schools are required to teach economics and financial literacy as part of the Economics & Business curriculum, the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey identified a significant gap in financial literacy amongst young adults in Australia, which is of particular concern given growing cost of living pressures and increased inflation.
Leveraging the insights of the La Trobe Business School team, the VCTA devised a strategy to address the factors affecting economics education in years 7-10 in Victorian schools. The strategy introduced a professional development program, which received support from the Victorian Department of Education. It comprised a series of eleven workshops delivered to 44 teachers from a range of metropolitan and regional schools. The aim was to develop learning resources along with skills and confidence in the teaching of economics and business to improve coverage of, and address concerns about, the level of economic and financial literacy among young people in Victoria. The program ran across 2022 and 2023 and participants reported increased knowledge and confidence in their ability to deliver the curriculum. In addition, participants from 60% of the schools have reported that they had already begun to disseminate their knowledge and skills to colleagues, and 33% have introduced new economics and business offerings to their students.
The success of this program led the Victorian Department of Education to extend funding with a focus on expanding the benefits into a greater number of regional and rural schools.
