Agreed, JVL... although what you say suggests that there would also need to be a significant upskilling of teachers to enable them to teach the subject effectively, so it is perhaps not as simple as adding it to the curriculum and declaring 'job done'. Most teachers I know aren't actively managing their money beyond the day to day, largely I suspect because the generous pension scheme provides sufficient financial security for the future.

NB I'm not making any particular point about teachers' pensions - good luck to them, I'm sure they all work really hard for it - but it's clearly a central plank of their own financial planning (or lack of it).

I'm involved in financial education for adults. I tend to deliver it via the workplace, but also support a charity that is involved in trying to help the financially disadvantaged.

The charity also does some work in schools, I've seen the material and it's excellent, their steer is that the concepts are incorporated into the existing curriculum, the obvious entry point is numeracy, but there are also good links to money in PCHE and even religion.

I think financial education is needed more than ever. I have "baby boomer" generation friends who tell me that in their working lives growth was virtually guaranteed, they also had access to final salary schemes. MIRAS, dole during Uni holidays and other perks which todays younger generation don't have which means that there are fewer chances for them to passively accumulate wealth.

Oddly enough the public sector via DB pensions still partly offers this, the issue being that unlike other workplaces that pay for workplace benefits and changes to them, to be explained to staff, certainly in teaching there is no chance of this, mainly due to workload.

I agree with the comments about the lack of financial awareness in teachers. Schools are the obvious place to start the process, but teachers are not necessarily the best people to be delivering (generalisation I know).

I was at a talk by Hector Sants of the new money and pensions service and he was saying how important it is to identify key touch points at which financial education can be delivered and built on, he seemed to have a good grasp of the issues, but as ever they key will be in the "how"

Oddly enough, when we deliver pre retirement sessions, a big proportion of the material covers life planning which for pre retirees about to undergo a big life change, we find is just as important as the financial planning.

The whole schools debate is interesting. Mrs Vind is a primary teacher and I know she has never taught about transgender, although I couldn't guarantee what is and isn't covered in older year groups.

What is clear to me is that teachers and schools have to deal with what is thrown at them by society. The rise in kids needing 1:1 attention for various issues is a big one. The rise in kids from violent and abusive backgrounds and how those backgrounds affect their behaviour in class. The rise in marital breakdown, and also the amount of parents that rush into having a new child with a new partner, apparently oblivious to the effect that it is having on an already vulnerable child. The amount of children starting school without any social skills, but also barely able to use the toilet or feed themselves.

What is clear is that we have parents that are barely more than kids themselves, often with issues of their own, bringing more kids into the world who quite frankly are 3-0 down in life before they start and it is this cohort of parents and kids that cost the state a disproportionate amount. Social care, teaching resources, benefits, council resource, police and NHS resource.

What is unsustainable is politicians of either hue plucking policies out of their backsides which often amount to grandstanding at best and cheap vote grabs at worst, and then leaving the likes of the Police, NHS, Schools etc. to pick up the pieces.

For clarity I'm not suggesting that all social problems come from marital breakdown and the vulnerable having kids. She encounters issues with kids from materially well off families that have similar issues. What both ends of the spectrum often display is a total lack of self awareness of the effect that their and their kids behaviours have on other people.

The use of phonics, which was opposed by many educationalists and teaching unions, has propelled English children right up the international league table for primary school age reading.

I'm sure there's something similar that could be done for first Maths and then basic economics... if the will is there. It probably needs Gove to be put back into the education department, to push things through. That's one place where he was very useful. Having two young kids, I was sad when Cameron pushed him out.

8 x 0 = 4 x 0 => what?

A young Singapore school kid would look at you with disdain, NoMoreKickingCans. (Then they'd kick your ass about your Brexit attitude, given their progress since breaking away from Malaysia)