PFS helps school pupils to 'pick' advisers' brains
The Personal Finance Society is to work with schools to give pupils the opportunity to pick the brains of financial advisers online.
The online sessions would allow pupils to talk to financial advisers to learn more about money matters while they cannot go into school.
More than 900 PFS members advisers have already signed up to be ambassadors of the professional body’s financial education initiative which is now temporarily moving online.
Previously the PFS was working with schools to provide workshops. More than 400 workshops were delivered to 12,000 students before the Coronavirus outbreak resulted in the temporary closure of schools.
Last month the PFS announced the launch of a dedicated website to complement its ‘My Personal Finance Skills’ free financial awareness programme.
The website initially featured four free online sessions, which last around 25 minutes, covering staying safe from scams, moving on from school, my future finance and how to make financial decisions.
Following positive feedback on the trial content, learning videos covering financial matters will now also regularly be added to the website https://mypersonalfinanceskills.org/
Topics that will be covered in bitesize videos include understanding your first payslip, staying safe from money mules and sexploitation, opening a bank account plus learning about credit.
Keith Richards, chief executive of the Personal Finance Society, said: “We have had fantastic feedback from teachers to our new website and many have added the videos to their Google Classrooms and remote teaching resources.
“We are also seeing interest from teachers in doing remote ‘live’ sessions, which we are currently piloting and hope to be able to deliver these to schools that are interested in interactive sessions through platforms such as Microsoft Teams.”
In the next academic year, the scheme will aim to reach even more pupils as more than 500 workshop sessions have already been booked.
These sessions will be rescheduled with schools being given the option of whether they would like to delay the session or to have a virtual workshop instead.