You know financial literacy is important for your students... but knowing what exactly to teach, and how to teach it stops you from taking action. We get it!

To help you take the first steps, here's a comprehensive insight into our curriculum. There are many ways to peel an orange, so how you bring yours to life is a completely unique exercise.

However, we've been using, adjusting and perfecting this curriculum for over three years now, and thousands of happy students follow this program each year. We reckon that says something!

So, we'd love to give you insight into how we created our program, to help you build yours! Feel free to use this curriculum as inspiration for your program.

First, we brainstormed, grouped and ordered  9 topics to form the basis of the program 👀

1. Mindset

We begin with Mindset for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's been shown that a person's mindset is 61% more influential in the long-term on their financial wellbeing, compared to their income. Secondly, Mindset sets the foundation for absorption and application of the materials to follow. We make sure to cover a spectrum of topics including financial equality, money & cultures and personal money stories. 

2. Employment

Next is employment. This is the next topic because it tackles the all important question of income. All the other topics naturally filter down from income. It's also one of the most timely topics as students begin searching for an engaging with employment opportunities. 

3. Budgeting

This is the topic that follows Employment most naturally. Once a student receives income through employment or otherwise, learning how to manage it is critical. Understanding the importance of saving and learning how to manage their spending is a crucial skill that takes time and practise to develop.

4. Super

Super is important to introduce into the puzzle sooner rather than later. Not only does it impact your students' take-home pay, but it introduces them to their rights as an employee. As a young person with low earnings, the wrong Superfund can absorb 100% of their super balance through unnecessary fees. You can help them avoid this!

5. Tax

Tax is next piece of the equation, and a huge part of it! We tackle tax at this stage in the curriculum as it relates back to employment, but also points forward to more complex topics. It bridges the gap between personal finance and the broader economic environment your students need to learn about.

6. Interest

Interest is the next key foundational piece that underpins the theory behind investing, debt and real-life finance. Some basic maths is necessary to understand this topic. It's the un-exciting but essential first step before your students can effectively understand the more exciting topics.

7. Debt

Debt is the first application pathway following on from interest. We choose to place our Debt content before Investing, as it's something that unfortunately becomes relevant much earlier than investing. Why? Investing is technically only available to students once they turn 18, while many forms of debt are available to students much, much earlier. 

8. Investing

Investing is our second last (and most exciting) topic! We choose to place it towards the end of our curriculum - after all, it is an amalgamation of all the concepts covered up to this point! We choose to frame Investing as an extension of savings. Once a student places their money into savings, it is form here that they are able to decide how to best invest (or not invest) that allocation.

9. Real Life Money

This topic includes all of the practical applications that a student will encounter after school. We like to think of this final chapter as a mixed bag. It covers a wide array of topics from purchasing a car, choosing a mobile phone plan, to admin and organisational tasks . We choose to introduce few technical concepts in this final module, and focus on application. 

Other topics you may want to consider explore include economics, advanced financial math, digital applications and property.

Next, we broke down our primary topics into three broad focus areas, bringing structure to the curriculum 🧑🏽‍💻

Each of these nine topics are HUGE. You could very easily spend an entire term on each topic, and still struggle to cover the theory bandwidth.

Because the school curriculum is already bursting at the seams, we decided to split each of the 9 topics into 3 focus areas. It made sense for us to convert each of these focus areas into a digestible 50 minute lesson. For our program, that meant 27 total lessons (roughly a term worth of lessons if you choose to do an intensive program).

However many lessons you choose to dedicate to each topic, it's important to remember to keep a good balance between theory and application. Have a look at our lesson breakdown!

1. Mindset

 2. Employment

3. Budgeting

4. Super

5. Tax

6. Interest

7. Debt

8. Investing

9. Life Admin

Next, we designed the flow and content structure of each lesson! 🎓

Within each lesson, we identified the top questions students had when it came to that topic, and transformed them into four bite-sized learning modules per lesson. Here's what our research revealed!

1. Mindset

 2. Employment

3. Budgeting

4. Super

5. Tax

6. Interest

7. Debt

8. Investing

9. Life Admin

Finally, we developed the theory packets, lessons, activities and supporting materials ! 🔨

How you choose to develop your lessons is unique to your preferred teaching style!

We chose to create a 2-3 minute theory delivery per learning packet, along with a 5-10 minute activity to apply the theory learnings. 

Per Lesson, that ended up as...

• 20-40 minutes of activities and application. Our activities are a blend of individual, pair, small group & classroom activities.
• A primary powerpoint and accompanying worksheet per lesson.
• 8-12 minutes of theory. We chose to develop custom videos (see below) for each learning packet. We ended up developing four videos per lesson, allowing the eventual teacher using the program to effectively eliminate lesson preparation time.

   

Download sample pages from our program here:

Download our program outline & curriculum mapping guide (Victorian & Australian) here:

And that's it!

Developing your own curriculum isn't rocket science, but it does take time, passion and in-depth understanding of the content.

If you would like advice regarding the development of your own curriculum, we're happy to give our two cents. If you'd like to use ours, you are able to explore and purchase the program, here! 🤠