The transition from education to employment is a pivotal moment. Besides academic knowledge, developing young people’s broader life and employability skills is also vital. This includes critical thinking and problem-solving skills commonly highlighted by the Edge Foundation's work with colleges and schools around the UK. As part of Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance (CEIAG), all schools must also provide a range of enrichment activities aimed at helping pupils to transition into employment under the framework of the Gatsby Benchmarks.
One skill often ‘assumed’ or overlooked is financial literacy. Unsurprisingly, many young people baulk at the idea of ‘number crunching’. Yet it takes little effort to foster this skill in a fun way that empowers them to navigate financial choices confidently and make informed career decisions. Recognising this, I recently developed a teaching aid on this topic: ‘The Finance Game’.
An engaging path to financial empowerment
'The Finance Game' is a creative, interactive approach to teaching young people about financial literacy. Using a customised Excel spreadsheet (based on real debt counsellors' finance statements) and working in teams, young people must make expenditure decisions to explore the interplay between personal finances and career choices. Applying experiential learning, they will learn about essential financial concepts such as budgeting, savings, investments, and debt management.
Crucially, young people using this approach learn through action rather than instruction. Nor is it not a crash course in Microsoft Excel! The crux of the game is about participating in a decision-making process. Given a financial problem to solve, with minimal information on how to solve it, learners develop a sense of curiosity and ownership for their financial well-being.
Mechanics of the game
Initially, students are split into teams before each receives a ‘surprise instruction’; perhaps the profile of an individual with a simple financial problem to solve. They might, for example, have to assess whether the person would prefer living in a house or a flat. Teams must then devise and balance the individual’s budget to meet the desired outcome without going into debt.
Using fictional characters allows students to apply their critical thinking objectively, detached from personal biases. Splitting into teams, meanwhile, provides the game with a competitive element. Using the spreadsheet, teams must determine various items and costs, creating a comprehensive overview of the person's financial situation. While the spreadsheet includes some basics, each team can add or remove items as long as they achieve their objective within the given budget. Naturally, this involves prioritising expenditure. For instance, groceries might have a high priority, while season tickets to a local football club might be a lower priority.
As the game progresses, participants receive increasingly complex tasks - introduced by the teacher, who acts as the game leader. Typically, the leader will play a facilitative rather than instructive role, encouraging students to learn through action. Besides not going into debt, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to succeed, giving learners plenty of flexibility in how they complete each task.
Linking finances to careers development
The game’s central objective is to demonstrate the relationship between personal finances and the income associated with different career paths. Participants will learn how short-term financial choices can impact longer-term aspirations.
To illustrate, a more complex task might involve weighing the cost and benefit of a 10-week skills training course that costs £1,000 but results in an additional £400 monthly income afterwards. Teams must adjust their priorities to accommodate the course costs while meeting essential needs. This will involve making expenditure cuts, thereby teaching learners about the benefits of short-term budgeting. The game includes a library of scenarios, although leaders can create their own based on what most appeals to students.
Empowering young people through real-life scenarios
The game goes beyond teaching financial literacy alone, cultivating critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills, too. Students must learn to adapt to changing financial circumstances, they will also foster teamwork and communication as they work towards a common goal.
Furthermore, the game reflects real-world financial planning. Using real-world learning, as supported by research from Edge, is vital for embedding 21st-century skills. And while the game is certainly not a magic bullet, it is an excellent introductory activity for teachers seeking to lay the financial foundations for students to participate in employer-driven project-based learning initiatives. Whatever the goal, students will become capable of managing financial affairs in various settings.
Equipping the next generation with comprehensive life skills needs a multipronged approach. And standalone initiatives like the Finance Game can support deeper, curriculum-integrated project-based and real-world learning. This means the game can help foster the knowledge, confidence, and independent thinking young people need to succeed while also supporting schools in their delivery of careers advice and guidance.
For more information or to discuss adapting the game to your context, please contact me on ken12brom@aol.com.
Ken Bromfield received his MBE “for services to higher education. This was mainly achieved as the Superintendent of Biochemistry Technical services at King’s College London and then as senior training officer in the staff development unit.
Throughout the whole of that period, he gained and applied training and development skills, including contract work for the British Council, mainly in W Africa.
He is also a debt advisor with Crosslight, the source of ideas that led to ‘The Finance Game.
He is has been a school governor for 50+ years, currently the Careers link governor within the Ark Schools Network. This has provided the focus of the application of the Finance Game for young people working towards the transition from full time education into employment.