Kids are back at school. But they won’t be taught one crucial thing

January 31, 2026 — 5:01am

It’s back to school in Australia and New Zealand – but with one key difference: Kiwi kids will now learn about money.

What started with first New Zealand’s Labour and then National party leaders promising to introduce money lessons at school during the country’s 2023 election has now progressed to a draft curriculum that’s ready to roll.

Compulsory lessons. For all New Zealand students, from year one through to year 10. While the curriculum is out and available to teach now, it will be mandatory from 2027.

But guess what? ‘Money smarts’ is already taught to all Finnish school kids, Irish kids, as of recently, many US kids and from 2028, to British kids.

Meanwhile, back here in Oz, our financial literacy – or any help achieving it – is never even mentioned by party leaders (whomever the opposition leader may be by next week), election or not.

In fact, Australia’s money-smarts strategy was effectively paused four years ago when responsibility for it was passed from ASIC to Treasury. This makes us one of the few Western countries to have no plan for improvement.

Young people need to be across how easily ‘buy now, pay later’ and advance-pay products can plunge them into financial deficit and distress.

Before then there had been an active – and effective – Australian Government Financial Literacy Board, chaired by the amazing Paul Clitheroe.

And unfortunately, inexplicably, at about the same time, Australia stopped participating in the only international benchmarking of school students’ money smarts, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

The last time Aussie kids took the financial literacy part of the OECD test was 2018. So we don’t even know how far behind our children have fallen.

But enough griping, let’s get fixing: what is being taught in NZ that isn’t happening here, and what can we, as parents, do about it?

I asked Neil Edmond, architect of the independent MoneyTime school resource that began in New Zealand and expanded to Australia and other countries, to analyse its new curriculum. Let’s get it straight that – to this point – our countries have been neck-and-neck on money education content.

“It’s fair to say the existing curriculum in NZ is very similar to what was done in Australia more than a decade ago [and is still in place now]. It’s light touch and inadequate,” he says.

I can vouch for that from personal experience – last year my son completed Year 10, and took just one lesson on money in that whole time. However, he is that heavy sciences and advanced maths kid, where the existing smattering of units on money exist in subjects like basic maths and business.

And therein lies the strength of New Zealand’s move: the new curriculum embeds financial literacy – so it must be explicitly taught – into the mandatory Social Sciences subject and, to a lesser degree, Maths.

Neil Edmond says: “It is also much more prescriptive about what is to be taught across the different age groups.”

What will be taught? “Needs and wants, types of goods and services, banks, income basics, businesses, budgets, borrowing and interest, payment methods, credit and debt, scams and fraud, insurance, types of employment, types of tax, superannuation, loans and investments,” he says.

It’s a pretty comprehensive list and a decent guide for Australian parents ahead of better money education here.

Helpful, too, is this insight from Zac Bakker, director of the Beyond the Curriculum independent teacher resource, which is also designed to fill the gaps in Australian schooling: “Many students leave school knowing formulas but not knowing how to read a payslip, understand debt or make basic financial decisions with confidence.”

And as someone who has been analysing the finance industry for more than 20 years, I would urge you to get specific in the explanations you give your kids about debt: I have seen 20 more ways spring up in that time to spend money you haven’t yet earned.

Your young people need to be across how easily ‘funky’ fintech services like ‘buy now, pay later’ and advance-pay products can plunge them into financial deficit and distress.

What’s more, we now have a US-style, warts-and-all credit score system which means they can derail their future in a heartbeat – I’m talking their ability to get anything from a phone to a loan. Explaining that to your children is also vital.

But it’s a daunting task to face alone. So, it’s no wonder Australian parents – and even the teachers who would be charged with doing it – want money content in the curriculum.

An enormous 95 per cent of teachers believe it’s important students learn about money and finance at school and 98 per cent of parents think so, found a recent study by the Ecstra Foundation – a not-for-profit providing school resources and grants for financial literacy initiatives.

I have launched a petition that parents and anyone can sign to finally, vitally, get some action on this. Because quite frankly, we are stealing our children’s futures if we don’t give them this sort of education here in Australia too.

Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon is the author of How to Get Mortgage-Free Like Me, available at www.nicolessmartmoney.com. Follow Nicole on Facebook, X and Instagram.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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