Finance at School – Best Non-Profit Adult Financial Education | The MAIAs 2022

Finanzas en el Cole (Finance at School) is a training program that provides public education teachers with financial knowledge. It is designed to empower teachers to make more informed and responsible decisions about finance and related products and services. This information can then be passed on and disseminated to their students, maximising the benefits.

The Peru-based program, which has won the Best Adult Financial Education Project in the Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards (2022), began in 2007. Implemented and designed by the Superintendency of Banking, insurances, and private pension funds of Peru (SBS), it has proved remarkably successful. The program has been implemented in all 24 regions of the country, reaching over 21,000 teachers and, through them, 1.5 million students.

Maria del Pilar Guerrero Lopez works for the SBS and helped design the award-winning scheme. She explains, “Finance planning is a skill that is generally lacking in Peru, and we wanted to fix that. It isn’t something typically taught to teachers, yet they are in the ideal position to share knowledge.

“The idea was to create a multiplicative effect by training them to be facilitators of financial education. They could share their training and financial know-how with multiple school grades for years to come. On average, each teacher reaches 70 students in just one year. They act as protagonists in the students’ lives and can help them avoid future monetary mistakes.”    

The training is aimed at teachers of subjects such as social sciences, citizen training, and economics. It takes three days, with sessions lasting three to four hours each day. The information and topics are taught through modules and face-to-face or virtual training, videos, group discussions, and other complementary digital tools.

However, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. Like everyone in the education sector, the pandemic forced innovations and training had to be done online.

“When Covid-19 hit the country, the face-to-face training of the Finances at School program was cancelled. But I firmly believed that the program should not stop, because teachers needed to continue training, and the financial education content was even more relevant than ever,” Maria says.

 “So, during April and May 2020, we worked on the methodology of the new remote modality of the program. I structured content and designed formats. This has enabled the training of approximately 3500 teachers on financial education just in two years.”

The program is demonstrably successful. The teachers’ financial knowledge is evaluated and tested before training, with face-to-face interaction improving financial understanding by 40% and virtual modality by over 20%. Furthermore, an assessment in 2017 found that trained teachers had more savings, and monitoring from 2013 to 2018 saw improved credit scores. These skills would then be passed on to the next generation.

It has also proved popular with the teachers themselves. Maria says, “The program has a 92% satisfaction rating. This has the added bonus of the teachers becoming our allies, helping us to coordinate other training programs, and inviting other teachers to participate. They are our best promotors.”

The Finance at School program continues to develop and grow. They are now working on a virtual course and texts for the students. They also recently broadcast financial education videos on national television, reaching around 6 million students. It will be interesting to see where it goes next.   

You can learn more about the program here or email us at the MAIAs.