Declining Financial Literacy Of Australian Teenagers And Who Should Take the Responsibility

There is an article on SMH Australian 15-year-olds declining in financial literacy: PISA report today. The basic gist is that Australian teenagers have low and declining level of financial literacy. One parent suggests math is useless and school should teach should be teaching them about finances and loans.

I do not agree with this view personally, math is the fundamental skill everybody should learn and have. Math skills underpin many basic days to day financial management of ones’ affair. For example, two persons I worked with on daily basis who are smart and articulate. However, given the task of working out how much GST paid on GST inclusive price of 100 dollars had no idea how to do so. If you do not have a basic level of math it is impossible to achieve the level of financial management skill that needed in the modern society. Without some basic math skills, it is very difficult to work out it is better to use the money to pay down your loan first or invest in something else.

In my view, parents are much better equipped to handle the majority of the workload in educating teenagers on the issue of financial literacy. You not able to offer advice and suggest more timely, there is also the opportunities of lead by example which in my view is another important aspect as well. I had a bank account in my primary school years and regularly deposited my pocket money into it. My parents did not force me to do that, they just sort of guided me in that direction and many similar examples like this which greatly benefited me in my adult years.

We as parents cannot expect the school to do everything for our children. We also need to take responsibility and teach our children about this. Most of parents including me have the tendency of over-sheltering our children, but we all need to overcome that and do what is good for our children.

Share this post:

Why Are Public School Share of Students Going Up First Time Since 1977

The stats and information are taken out of this Public schools increase share of enrolments, reversing 40 year trend article on SMH. The basic of what is happening is as following

New figures from the Bureau of Statistics show that government schools in 2016 educated 65.4 per cent of all students, up from the historical low of 2014 when it was 65.1 per cent.

Public school enrolments have declined at about 0.4 per cent per year since 1977, when 79 per cent of students went to government schools nationally. The increase appears to be partly at the expense of Catholic schools. In 2016 there was a small decline in the Catholic sector’s share of students (from 20.4 per cent in 2015 down to 20.2 per cent) while the independent sector remained steady at 14.4 per cent.

In terms of raw numbers rather than enrolment share, there were 3,798,226 school students across Australia in 2016, an increase of 47,253 on 2015. Of those, the vast majority (38,672) went to government schools, 1,511 to Catholic schools and 7,070 to independent schools.

In NSW the enrolment share of government school students was at its lowest in 2015, at 65.3 per cent, increasing slightly to 65.4 per cent in 2016.

The most interesting point to speculate is why this is happening. I personally think the cost is the driving factor here. After the prolonged period of stagnating wage and real income growth for most of the last decade since GFC in 2008, this is starting to bite. We may start to see more of the flow towards public school driving by the perception of better value for money, particularly true for the “better” schools. Some parents may also think that money spends on purchasing properties fall within the school catchment of good public schools is a better investment for money compare to sending the kids to the private schools.

Share this post:

 

en_AUEnglish (Australia)