Financial education ‘not preparing youth properly’

Current modes of financial education are not helping young people to deal with the challenges they are set to face in later life.

So claims the Personal Finance Education Group (Pfeg), which states that many young people believe they are more financially-aware when leaving school and home than is actually the reality.

Alastair Mathews, director of policy for Pfeg, said: “Many young people initially think that they’re good at managing money, sometimes because they haven’t yet got much experience of doing it.”

This could mean that numbers of students and other young people get into a situation where they need debt managementor other forms of debt help through lack of information.

Mr Mathews added that with so many new challenges facing those leaving home, it was all too easy for young people to get into a situation where they could require advice to become debt free, since even weekly shopping posed a new challenge.

A recent Future Leaders Survey conducted by Forum for the Future revealed that more than four out of five prospective students considered themselves “very” or “quite” good with money.