Hitting the road with NatWest’s MoneySense

2 May 2018

At We Are Futures we pride ourselves on engaging with young people through educational programmes that help them to develop and become the leaders of tomorrow, and NatWest MoneySense is no different.

MoneySense provides access to free learning resources for children aged 5-18, to help them better understand the complicated world of money. We started working with NatWest on MoneySense in 2015 and have since developed it into an all-encompassing financial education programme with a range of both print and digital content. It includes links to Department for Education subjects in areas such as PSHE, Computing, Maths, Citizenship and Business Studies. It has been given the coveted Financial Education Quality Mark from Young Enterprise and in the last few months we have been working in partnership with nasen to develop special educational needs resources.

A big part of spreading the word of MoneySense is through educational events and that’s where I come in.  I started working on the programme in December and by February the MoneySense tour of England had begun! My journey so far has taken me to ten different events across the four corners of England – from Manchester to Poole and Yeovil to Colchester. Each event has provided a fantastic opportunity to connect with teachers and hear their views; they are all from different backgrounds varying from teachers in special schools to school improvement officers who work for the local council, but the one thing they all have in common is a belief that financial education is an extremely important part of their students’ development.

Ben Ryall – MoneySense Ambassador

Out of all the conferences I’ve been to so far, I have received the best reception from teachers whose students have SEND. They are always delighted to hear about MoneySense’s SEND specific resources as they are very aware of how vulnerable their students can be when it comes to making the right decisions about their money. Working in partnership with nasen we were able to tailor the most important topics from each age group to be more suitable for young people with learning difficulties, speaking first hand with teachers and parents of children with SEND I can safely say these resources have gone down very well.

I’ve loved travelling around the country and engaging with so many different people working in education, it’s been amazing to see their passion for teaching but also their determination to continually develop and look for new ways to improve their teaching. Like them, we too are always looking for ways to develop MoneySense and are continually creating new resources to ensure young people can be more independent now and better prepared for the future.

If you would like to register for the free MoneySense resources, follow this link to the website and sign up today!