This year FLIC, the charity set up by the Financial Times to promote foundational financial education for all, will celebrate its fifth anniversary. Much has been achieved. But the work to close the gulf between those, like many FT readers, who are highly financially literate and the rest of the population has a long way to go.
Among the Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign’s key achievements so far are these. Forty-two hours of meticulously planned lessons for 11 to 18-year-olds have been distributed to more than 1,000 of the UK’s 4,000 secondary schools. The government has announced that foundational finance will be an obligatory part of both primary and secondary curricula across England, following relentless lobbying by FLIC and other groups. And our adult education programme — 70 short-form videos hosted on ftflic.com — is now freely available to all.
The FT itself has, of course, always been a medium of financial education, albeit at an elevated level. The rationale for FLIC was to create a foundational platform of financial understanding for everyone. The task began with young people. Becky Francis, chair of the independent review that paved the way for the government’s announcement, said youngsters were hungry for more financial knowledge — due to an awareness of rising living costs and ever easier access to financial products on phones. Financial literacy was the “one topic that was consistently raised by every single focus group”, she said, and “the most highlighted area of importance by parents”.
