Bridging the Knowledge Gap - The Need for Financial Literacy in Schools

Financial literacy is a primary life skill that helps individual to make conscious and disciplined decision, to manage their finances and money properly, and helps achieve long term financial wellbeing (Lusardi & Mitchell, 2014). Regardless of holding a considerable value, an absence of formal learning of financial education in the schooling of children has led to rampant financial illiteracy (OECD, 2014). This text examines the vital urgency for unifying financial literacy into the formal education, highlighting its prospective impact to mold the conscious and responsible behavior from a young age (NCFE, 2024). Using a theoretical and non-empirical approach, based on secondary data, this text integrates existing literature, it recognizes systemic and class-based barriers to implement and offer a hierarchical curriculum structure that is based on age-based learning (Kimiyaghalam & Safari, 2015; Shankar, 2017). This text addresses challenges such as limited pedagogical training, variable curriculum framework, educational resource variance among schools (Lusardi, 2019). This text ends with the suggestion of a standardized national framework backed by regulating and financial institutions and embedding experimental approaches, learning through gamification, and tech-based learning to ensure deep impact (RBI, 2018; Agu, et al., 2024). Fusing financial literacy in early education is not just a policy making initiative, but a societal and financial necessity, that supports conscious, informed decisions (Lusardi & Messy, 2023).