20 Mar 2013

Money management integrated into Fiji school curriculum

6:49 pm on 20 March 2013

Every child in every classroom in Fiji will receive lessons about budgeting and investing money under a new programme that's being rolled out from next month.

The Financial Education Fiji Project is funded by AusAID and is jointly managed by the Ministry of Education and the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme or PFIP.

A PFIP co-ordinator for the project, Abigail Chang, says the initiative rose out of a recognition of the importance of teaching basic personal money management in the classroom at an early age.

She says while parents still play a role, they can't always keep up with changes.

"Personal money management also needs to keep up with the changing times. And we also realise that our children are now in a world where they're dealing with mobile money, they're dealing with ATM and Eftpos cards, which may not have been around at the time of their parents."

Abigail Chang says the programme will be integrated within existing subjects and as far as they know no other country in the world has so comprehensively introduced money management into the school curriculum.