Do you remember when you were at school, and you learnt about the concept of money through having a shop in the classroom or at home? The jingle of coins in your money jar or, as delighted as I was at the time, in a pretend till – with a receipt roll (I was very proud of that added feature). You may have been the person who organised the school tuck shop. Whatever your experience, the concept of money, handling the coins and notes, calculation totals and change was very much part of school life. Your purse was one which bulged (with a bit of luck) not flat with cards and the piggy bank a gift which was a rite of passage. You emptied it regularly to count your savings for the much-anticipated toy at the shop.
Then, the way we handled money began to change, and with COVID, it changed even more. For our children, money is on a ‘magic card’ which you just swipe and potentially, for our youngest students, a bottomless pit – you just keep swiping this ‘magic card’. They are not handling it daily, counting it into groups of 10p pieces and swapping for a £1 note or £1 coin. It is an unusual occurrence rather than the norm that you take cash out and hand it over at the shop. As leaders in girls’ education, teaching the concept of money has changed dramatically to how to manage money. This was highlighted to me at the start of the year when I received this persuasive leadership application letter from Jisoo in Year 6. We were already transforming our financial education through our ‘Ready for Forever’ programme and this letter of pupil voice prompted us to see more than ever that ‘change’ was necessary in our financial education.
Leadership Application
When I started to write this application, my thoughts turned to the famous Malory Towers, Head Girl character, Darrell Rivers. She has excellent leadership skills, self-confidence and is popular amongst her peers. This would be a traditional Head Girl model.
A moment of self-doubt flickered like a flame because although I have these qualities to a reasonable degree, these are not my strongest attributes. However, I remembered that at Sutton High, we celebrate diversity as there is not ‘just one type’ and we are not expected to squeeze into a cookie-cutter mould. In fact, we are encouraged to be the very opposite and ‘be you’.
My strongest qualities would be a burning curiosity to learn, originality and a strong desire to be independent. These are the qualities that I would bring as Head Girl to inspire others girls and my pledge is based on.
My pledge is to write a monthly article about my findings about how to manage money and different ways to invest it in order to inspire and educate other girls. At the end of the year,with my parents’ permission, I will buy a small share in a company as an experiment. With the Pupil Leadership Team, I would like to create opportunities to understand profit and costs by managing the accounts for some Summer Fair stalls and allowing young entrepreneurs to sell products.
In the news, headlines scream about ballooning inflation and mortgage rates causing a cost-of-living crisis. However, when I come to school, there is little mention of money. At school, we learn about money only in maths but we have no sense of how much things cost in the real world. I feel that there is not enough attention given to educating us about finances which is why I believe my pledge is important.
I learnt my first independent money at Sutton High when I won a £25 book token in the GDST Writing Competition. I was ecstatic with exhilaration! That very day, I went to Waterstones and spent the whole lot plus extra from the bank of mummy. However, immediately, I wondered how to earn more money and how to use it wisely.
I also discovered in a book about bank interest — the concept of money earning money which I found very exciting and novel. Subsequently, I paid a visit to my local bank and deposited my pocket money. In fact, recently, I have received a letter from the bank informing me that my interest rate has increased.
I will honour my pledge to inspire other girls to take an interest in money and make it a more approachable subject. If I can, you can! It can be as simple as understanding how much it costs to do your weekly shopping or hold a birthday party.
This is linked to the ‘Then and Now’ theme this year and Year 6 transition lessons ‘Ready for the World’. I don’t think learning about money would have been considered something to teach girls nor something to teach at our age in the past. Now we want to be independent and financially smart girls prepared for the future.
This letter demonstrated the desire from our students to develop their financial education was there – and they set the bar high for us teachers, but we were resourceful and resilient, and we introduced the Virgin Money’s Make £5 Grow Entrepreneur programme with Year 6.
After the excitement of tests, residential trips, the Year 6 Play, we introduced this project which engaged the energy of Year 6 for the final term. As the programme states, ‘Encouraging our students to embrace their entrepreneurial skills, and making them happier about money, will help them succeed later in life.’
The project by Amariah and Amara,
During June, the whole of Year 6 participated in a competition. Before this, we were each given £5, and we had to get into groups of 4. We then had to create a stall of our choice and competed to create the most profit.
Within our groups, we had £20 to buy all our supplies. This taught us how to manage our money and not to go over budget. Firstly, we had to plan what we were going to buy and what type of stall we wanted to establish. A number of people decided to form stalls such as bracelets, nail painting, hair colouring\hair braiding, stress balls and much more! We had to use our creativity to make a poster to advertise what we were selling. As well as making a poster, we had to create a menu so customers could understand what our product was about. We worked on our project at school which meant we were not excluding anyone by working on the project at home, therefore we got to decide everything as a group and not come up with ideas to add without consent from our team.
We then went to the Sutton High School last Saturday, the Summer Fair, and we were given a stall to place all our products on to sell. Once we had set up, people started to see our stalls. Although we were in charge of our stalls, we did get a chance to roam around the other stalls to explore what the other girls had put together.
This was such an interesting and exiting activity as we got to collaborate and find out what other people have an interest in. For this project, our target was to make as much profit as we could. This money will be split between our charities: Salvation Army (and their food banks), Surrey Wildlife Trust and the Brain Tumour Research.
In conclusion, we all very much enjoyed this experience, and it was a terrific opportunity to collaborate with one another and to make sure you include everyone. This was also a great learning opportunity on how to run a small business and manage money.
I really enjoyed working together on this project. It was great to practise business with a number of different people using multiple ideas. Jisoo
I thought it was really fun to experience what real business might be like and have our own stalls at the Summer Fair. It was a really nice experience to get together and work with friends and make the products over time. It brought our friendships closer together. Maddie
It really boosted my confidence a lot because I had to speak to people and get them to come to my stall and be loud. It really made me feel more confident. Izzy
I enjoyed seeing all of the different stalls and see what was popular. Ruby
I thought it was good collaborative activity because we all helped each other, even if we were in different teams. I was surprised how many different stalls there were in Year 6. There was nail painting, guessing the teddy name and throwing balls into cups. Mari
Grow £5 was really fun and we had to use our superpowers to create a successful stall. We also had to use subjects like Maths and Art and think about finance and creativity and originality to make our products. Natasha
I really enjoyed going round to everyone’s stalls and seeing what they made and buying things. I bought lots of slime and candles. Nicole
It was a really collaborative task working with each other. We had to work together and decide on lots of things like what to sell and how to price it. Melia
It was a wonderful experience and we used most of our superpowers and had lots of fun. I used my collaboration superpower and even made new friends. It really boosted my confidence and we had to talk to people at the Summer Fair that we didn’t know. Emma
It was so rewarding when we sold things because we had put so much work in to working on the items and working as a team to agree on everything. It gave us a lot of independence because we had to set ourselves a goal and work together to achieve it. We had to show commitment on the day of the Summer Fair and make sure we were helping each other out. Hannah
N.B. Year 6 made nearly £1000 profit for our chosen charities. Well done girls.
