It has always seemed crazy to me when I teach my niche VCE subject of Economics that for many students it is the first time they ever come across concepts such as inflation or interest rates in their academic career.
Not to mention even further to that when we get into the weeds on tax brackets, the tax mix etc all of which currently impacts many of them with casual and part time jobs yet no understanding at all of what the numbers on their payslip mean.
It’s really not setting them up for success when they set off into the adult world when so many students could miss these in their education completely.
You should write a response! I have visibility of the one side of the Hums divide but poor geography and especially economics and business either get ignored entirely or are taught so poorly even I want to bang my head against the wall.
This is a great idea as it’s a nice mix of my reading of The Knowledge Gap, but then also a rarely explored area where students lack the contextual background knowledge to understand the world around them.
Yes, I didn't get into the maths part. I do acknowledge it's mostly in there, to the extent that it's anywhere, but didn't cover the detail as I couldn't comment on how well its taught. Although I would hazard that because maths is assessed and HASS isn't, what gets tested is more likely to get taught.
Certainly the survey findings suggest that the underlying financial concept - as opposed to the mathematical procedure - hasn't necessarily transferred into the real world ability to answer certain questions. I don't think maths teachers should be responsible for teaching inflation as a concept - do you?
I mean, probably not? But the most likely case would be that it is introduced as being a new concept to students (the same way they are for interest and depreciation in y9-10) as there is often little cross-communication between subjects for background knowledge like that. And for y11-12 you can't guarantee what subjects the students are taking.
And even for interest and depreciation, assessment wise the focus is much more on calculating a value and applying linear and exponential models than it is on making good financial decisions. You get to maybe "which is the better option" and it's a glorified which value was greater/lesser question.
NSW embeds a lot more saving and spending financial content in Stage 4-5 than AC9 or VC2 do.
For y11-12, VCE is probably the most lacking one comparatively. Other states General Mathematics (or equivalent) includes a proper consumer arithmetic topic that has been poorly positioned in the current VCE study design in amongst the recursion content. So much so that I think most don't even realise it's in there, instead focusing on recurrence relations and rules for interest and depreciation alone and basically nothing on shares or inflation. When it does move onto modelling paying off loans and receiving payments from annuities, there's not much emphasis on considering it personally or the ramifications of how much interest you're paying, it's just a number that's worked out.
That said, VCE Foundation Mathematics does include a lot more of practical personal-finance usage, but there's still very low enrolment numbers for it.
Thanks Alex. I did high school in NSW and did a Commerce elective in 9/10 - although this is 20 years ago now - and that had lots of useful stuff in it. I also remember doing the consumer arithmetic topic in General. In any case, I think there's a bigger discussion to be had about what we expect schools to teach students in this area and whether the focus is on knowledge of particular ideas or concepts (something like inflation unlocks a whole domain of understanding about the real world) or whether the focus is on doing the actual calculations. For instance I remember doing exercises based on tax brackets in Maths and while the specific procedure is probably not that helpful, understanding the difference between marginal tax rates in different income brackets as opposed to average tax rates is something that has stuck.
Millionaire Teacher actually gave me the financial peace to pursue teaching. It’s amazing learning the power of compound interest and what living below one’s means can do for someone financially in one decade, even on a teachers salary.
Clare’s keyhole surgery to the F-2 maths curriculum is a direct response to the Year 3 NAPLAN results.
It seems the specific addressing of financial literacy is not necessarily a part of that but rather a response to concerns for people’s financial literacy and therefore their happiness later in life.
If we can simply get our early number knowledge taught effectively in F-2 I can see the entire landscape changing for maths curriculum conversations and how we address financial literacy.
Like interest, better knowledge from the start has a compounding effect.
Financial literacy outcomes will improve dramatically simply because we have effectively taught our youngest how to unitise and regroup from the first years of schooling.
The implications of those simple skills being learnt properly early are much bigger that we are giving them credit.
Financial literacy in 2026 should be core. You make some great points about the Vic curriculum. You also, perhaps inadvertently, point out the biggest issue in Humanities. If we aggregate all the skills of the teachers by the four strands of Humanities, History wins. Yet I’m not convinced this is optimal for making choices about the weighting of the areas. Economics and Business (and Civics and Citizenship) are really crucial strands in developing the empowered, independent citizens we need. Inflation, interest rates, marginal tax rates (versus average) are all important ideas. Superannuation is not sparkly in nature, but it has important consequences if we make poor or uninformed decisions. We need to be much better informed when making a bunch of decisions as consumers, which connects nicely. Some of the marketing tricks employed to create needs, or manipulate perceptions, blow budgets. There could be a rich curriculum here that really gets students prepared for a world that won’t be kind in helping them manage money.
I certainly agree that it needs to be taught in Humanities. I wish the Vic curriculum had some core terminology that every student must know. I also wish this was mandatory.
I entirely agree with Shaun on teaching Economics without this preparation.
It has always seemed crazy to me when I teach my niche VCE subject of Economics that for many students it is the first time they ever come across concepts such as inflation or interest rates in their academic career.
Not to mention even further to that when we get into the weeds on tax brackets, the tax mix etc all of which currently impacts many of them with casual and part time jobs yet no understanding at all of what the numbers on their payslip mean.
It’s really not setting them up for success when they set off into the adult world when so many students could miss these in their education completely.
So glad you commented because I was about to tag you!
Finally, content in my specific niche 😂
You should write a response! I have visibility of the one side of the Hums divide but poor geography and especially economics and business either get ignored entirely or are taught so poorly even I want to bang my head against the wall.
This is a great idea as it’s a nice mix of my reading of The Knowledge Gap, but then also a rarely explored area where students lack the contextual background knowledge to understand the world around them.
Do it!
And yet simple interest is in the year 9 maths curriculum and compound interest is in the year 10 curriculum…
Yes, I didn't get into the maths part. I do acknowledge it's mostly in there, to the extent that it's anywhere, but didn't cover the detail as I couldn't comment on how well its taught. Although I would hazard that because maths is assessed and HASS isn't, what gets tested is more likely to get taught.
Certainly the survey findings suggest that the underlying financial concept - as opposed to the mathematical procedure - hasn't necessarily transferred into the real world ability to answer certain questions. I don't think maths teachers should be responsible for teaching inflation as a concept - do you?
I mean, probably not? But the most likely case would be that it is introduced as being a new concept to students (the same way they are for interest and depreciation in y9-10) as there is often little cross-communication between subjects for background knowledge like that. And for y11-12 you can't guarantee what subjects the students are taking.
And even for interest and depreciation, assessment wise the focus is much more on calculating a value and applying linear and exponential models than it is on making good financial decisions. You get to maybe "which is the better option" and it's a glorified which value was greater/lesser question.
NSW embeds a lot more saving and spending financial content in Stage 4-5 than AC9 or VC2 do.
For y11-12, VCE is probably the most lacking one comparatively. Other states General Mathematics (or equivalent) includes a proper consumer arithmetic topic that has been poorly positioned in the current VCE study design in amongst the recursion content. So much so that I think most don't even realise it's in there, instead focusing on recurrence relations and rules for interest and depreciation alone and basically nothing on shares or inflation. When it does move onto modelling paying off loans and receiving payments from annuities, there's not much emphasis on considering it personally or the ramifications of how much interest you're paying, it's just a number that's worked out.
That said, VCE Foundation Mathematics does include a lot more of practical personal-finance usage, but there's still very low enrolment numbers for it.
Thanks Alex. I did high school in NSW and did a Commerce elective in 9/10 - although this is 20 years ago now - and that had lots of useful stuff in it. I also remember doing the consumer arithmetic topic in General. In any case, I think there's a bigger discussion to be had about what we expect schools to teach students in this area and whether the focus is on knowledge of particular ideas or concepts (something like inflation unlocks a whole domain of understanding about the real world) or whether the focus is on doing the actual calculations. For instance I remember doing exercises based on tax brackets in Maths and while the specific procedure is probably not that helpful, understanding the difference between marginal tax rates in different income brackets as opposed to average tax rates is something that has stuck.
It’s like there’s no kind of process externally to audit the implementation of the guaranteed and viable curriculum.
If only there were some cross-curricula reference that highlighted where relevant content was in other subjects.
Millionaire Teacher actually gave me the financial peace to pursue teaching. It’s amazing learning the power of compound interest and what living below one’s means can do for someone financially in one decade, even on a teachers salary.
Clare’s keyhole surgery to the F-2 maths curriculum is a direct response to the Year 3 NAPLAN results.
It seems the specific addressing of financial literacy is not necessarily a part of that but rather a response to concerns for people’s financial literacy and therefore their happiness later in life.
If we can simply get our early number knowledge taught effectively in F-2 I can see the entire landscape changing for maths curriculum conversations and how we address financial literacy.
Like interest, better knowledge from the start has a compounding effect.
Financial literacy outcomes will improve dramatically simply because we have effectively taught our youngest how to unitise and regroup from the first years of schooling.
The implications of those simple skills being learnt properly early are much bigger that we are giving them credit.
Tracey West helped me see the links between financial literacy and student debt problems.
Financial literacy in 2026 should be core. You make some great points about the Vic curriculum. You also, perhaps inadvertently, point out the biggest issue in Humanities. If we aggregate all the skills of the teachers by the four strands of Humanities, History wins. Yet I’m not convinced this is optimal for making choices about the weighting of the areas. Economics and Business (and Civics and Citizenship) are really crucial strands in developing the empowered, independent citizens we need. Inflation, interest rates, marginal tax rates (versus average) are all important ideas. Superannuation is not sparkly in nature, but it has important consequences if we make poor or uninformed decisions. We need to be much better informed when making a bunch of decisions as consumers, which connects nicely. Some of the marketing tricks employed to create needs, or manipulate perceptions, blow budgets. There could be a rich curriculum here that really gets students prepared for a world that won’t be kind in helping them manage money.
I certainly agree that it needs to be taught in Humanities. I wish the Vic curriculum had some core terminology that every student must know. I also wish this was mandatory.
I entirely agree with Shaun on teaching Economics without this preparation.