In its first 12 months of operation the Howard Government’s Financial Literacy Foundation has made significant progress towards its goal of assisting Australians, particularly young people, to develop their financial skills and better manage their money, the Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer, Peter Dutton, said today.
“Over the last 12 months the Government’s Financial Literacy Foundation has made some major achievements in helping school aged Australians steer clear of debt and manage their money,” Mr Dutton said.
“These days, children don’t have to watch television for too long before they are greeted by a ‘crazy frog’ or ‘dancing dragon’ singing the latest Top 40 track. With more and more young people using mobile phones, there is significant peer pressure to have the most unique ring-tone or the latest phone-game – all of which can lead to children racking up a mountain of debt,” Mr Dutton said.
“This is not a good habit to develop as they grow older and begin earning their own money.”
“One of the key achievements of the Foundation has been to work with the States and Territories to produce a National Curriculum Framework for Financial Literacy in schools for years 3,5,7 and 9,” Mr Dutton said.
“This is a unique arrangement in Australia, where State and Territory Governments and the Commonwealth have worked together to provide benchmarks for teaching school children about the importance of managing their money.”
Mr Dutton said that among the Foundation’s other first-year achievements have been:
- implementing a pilot programme in partnership with the Master Builders Association to introduce financial literacy training to cadets, apprentices and the MBA membership;
- establishing an Education and Trainers Network to provide a community of practice through which educators, human resource professionals and resource developers can share experiences and provide quality financial literacy education and training, and;
- developing working relationships with a wide range of partner organisations that deliver literacy training.
- “Later this year the Foundation will launch a major public information campaign designed to raise community awareness of the value of financial literacy,” Mr Dutton said.
New partnership
To mark the anniversary, Mr Dutton also highlighted the cooperation between the Foundation and Innovations and Business Skills Australia (IBSA) in separately packaging financial literacy competency standards to make them more accessible to anyone wishing to deliver financial literacy training.
“This joint activity is exactly the sort of thing the Foundation was set up to do, to work with existing service providers to ensure Australians have the opportunity to better manage their money, particularly through easier access to training and specialist advice,” he said.
IBSA is the national Industry Skills Council with coverage of financial services training and is primarily funded by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training.
“Financial literacy is for everyone, not just people working in the financial services industry,” the Chief Executive Officer of IBSA, Ms Sharon Coates, said.
“By making these nationally endorsed industry standards available as a package, anyone wanting to use them to help build a financial literacy training course can search IBSA’s site on ‘financial literacy’ and the first thing that will come up will be this purpose-build publication that can be used by a broad range of people for financial literacy improvement.”
“They can be used by Registered Training Organisations that want financial literacy in their programmes but do not want the whole Financial Services Training Package, by people developing training programmes for workplaces and for those developing training or information sessions in a local community.”
“In this way, these government-funded resources will be used for broader purposes and have a far broader impact,” she said.