A new school-level randomised controlled trial (RCT) exploring the impact of The Money Charity’s ‘Money Workshops’ on students’ attitudes and behaviour, confidence and knowledge relating to managing money, has been published today.
The Money Charity commissioned NFER to provide an independent evaluation of their Money Workshops in Schools and Colleges for Key Stage 4 and post-16 students, as part of the Money Advice Service financial capability ‘What Works Fund’. The Money Workshops cover aspects of money and finance and aim to increase students’ confidence, knowledge and skills relating to money matters. They are delivered in hour-long sessions to classroom-sized groups by trained consultants.
The RCT study found that, although there were no significant effects on students’ attitudes and behaviours relating to money (the primary outcome for the trial), the Money Workshops were effective at improving students’ self-reported confidence in managing money, how much students’ feel they know about savings and credit, and how much students’ feel they know about planning and budgeting.
Dr Ben Styles, head of NFER’s Education Trials Unit said: “Young people have limited opportunities to learn about managing money and finances and our findings from this evaluation emphasise the importance and relevance of financial education to equip young people with the confidence they need to manage their money. Studies of this type use self-reported proxies for behaviour change so are always limited but given that most students received just one workshop, the effects seen are impressive. The Money Charity and financial capability stakeholders will be using these findings to inform financial capability policy and practice more widely.”
More key findings from The ‘Randomised Controlled Trial Evaluation of The Money Charity's Workshops in Schools’ report are available to view here.