Money, money, money . . . . How do we teach ‘money’ in a cashless world?
Financial literacy traditionally has been taught from an early age. Born sixty years ago, I was one of the last school years to be taught the pre-decimalisation coinage of pounds, shillings and pence. Those a few years younger than me in their mid-fifties are likely only to know of a ‘sixpence’ from nursery rhymes and most would have no idea of the value of a crown. Of course, they will have grown up spending the old shilling coins which took on the value of five new pence (5p), but probably had no idea that there were 12 pennies (12d) in a shilling.
The same process is happening again.
A colleague recently bought a toy cash register for her pre-school daughter only to discover that the child would not engage with using the coins when playing ‘shop’. Instead, she wanted her mother's phone in order to pay for transactions. My colleague reflected that her daughter had never seen her spend notes and coins when out shopping. Her daughter’s learned experience was only of Apple Pay. Children adopt the behaviours that the adults around them model.
The experience of coinage for many current key stage one children is limited to a pound coin kept in the car to put into the supermarket trolley; and any bank notes they might receive for their birthday and Christmas. I am told that even the tooth fairy is moving to notes! For newly minted (see what I did there!) GenBeta, current coinage will be confined to museum exhibits and collector pieces at antique fairs. The pound coin and fifty pence piece will have the same status that shillings and crowns have today.
Children are growing up in a cashless world. Even pocket money has gone cashless. Banks and other providers offer charge cards for children, such as Revolut and GoHenry, which can be topped up and monitored by parents via a phone app. A straw poll in assembly this week indicated that most of Year 5 and Year 6 already had one.
Schools, of course, will continue to teach money as part of their mathematics curriculum, despite its increasing daily obsolescence. Like telling the time using an analogue clock, money will become an anachronistic part of the national curriculum. Monetary transactions have always been an important way to ground addition and subtraction into the real world. ‘If I buy two apples for ten pence each, and an orange at 15p, how much change will I get from a £1 coin?’ In the world of tapping debit cards and Apple Pay the whole concept of ‘change’ becomes obsolete.
Here at Stamford, our Year 1 students have a local trip out to the town’s Friday market where they can spend cash on purchasing a half kilo of their chosen fruit from a traditional market stall.
The physical act of counting out coins and receiving change helps underline the cost and value of what is being bought, in a way that does not happen when paying for goods by tapping a card or phone. I wonder how children will learn these key financial concepts of in a tap-and-go world.
The Magna Carta Two Pound Coin, 2015
There are also wider implications for education of the move to cashless economy. Coinage is a significant way in which Britain has established a sense of nationhood. The Royal Mint has a long history of producing special edition coins to celebrate important national events dating back to the George V Silver Jubilee Crown. Royal jubilees, coronations and weddings, and key historical anniversaries, such as the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta (2015), or the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare (2016) and 75th anniversary of the NHS (2023) have all been celebrated by issuing special commemorative coins.
When children learn about bank notes, they not only learn maths and commerce, but also about key figures in the nation’s history: Winston Churchill (£5), Jane Austen (£10), J M W Turner (£20) and Alan Turing (£50).
With tap-and-go replacing coins, and email and messaging replacing stamps, two of the most potent symbols of national and royal propaganda of the past centuries will be lost on future generations.
Going forward, as a society we will have to find new ways to celebrate our history and nationhood. Parents and educators will have to find ways to harness the opportunities that digital currencies provide. Perhaps maths questions in the future will ask, ‘If your GoHenry starting balance is £5.57 and the transaction cost is £0.89, what is the end balance?’