Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I was having a chat with my 25-year-old daughter the other day and not that she was a top student, but she was bemoaning the fact to me that she’s 25 years old, she’s a young adult, she’s living here in the North and she doesn’t know much about savings, budgeting, credit, banking and that she feels that she should have maybe learned something about that in school. Now, I know there’s a role for parents to play, too, in teaching these things, but I’d like seriously to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, is there anything in the curriculum of our high schools where students learn about financial management? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This has been brought to our attention from some of the parents who want their child to be fully aware of financial awareness. Based on that, we’ve been dealing with our DEAs and DECs. If they haven’t provided an actual curriculum relating to the fiscal outlook, the financial management, time management, those are areas that we talk about, CALM class. We have some of the communities that do the program delivery of CALM class, a career and life choice management course that’s also taught in our high schools. So that is an area that students can take on courses to learn life management. So, we know that we need to do more and I’m open to some ideas on how to deal with those issues. Mahsi.
Thank you. I just think that we have a really golden opportunity with our young people in the school system to learn something about this, because it is a life skill that is extremely important and will stand them in good stead as they go out into the work world.
Has the Department of Education ever considered inviting banking institutions into the school where they could also provide some information and perhaps help students with something like setting up bank accounts? I know there aren’t banks in every community; but there is online banking and most kids these days have access to the Internet.
So I’d like to ask the Minister, have they ever thought about involving any of the major banks in coming and doing some awareness and some teaching and perhaps even helping young people set up accounts? Thank you..
Obviously this is an excellent idea. Even when I was in high school, we had different professionals coming to the community, for example, bankers, talking about accounting. This is an area I need to share with the DEAs and DECs. It’s their school, as well, and I need to work with them. I’m sure they will be more than receptive because they are always looking for ideas on how we can have educational awareness around accounting, around banking. I’m glad the Member has given us some ideas that we can generate within DECs and DEAs. I will be bringing that to their attention. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
