Standard Life helps primary school children get “On the Money”

Standard Life, in partnership with Learning and Teaching Scotland and Scottish Book Trust, is delighted to announce the launch of On the Money, a progressive and innovative new financial capability project aimed at helping children become financially responsible adults.  The emphasis of this unique initiative is to introduce financial topics to primary aged children through storytelling.  Combining literacy, numeracy and drama, On the Money aims to bring financial education to children aged between eight and 12 to help them become financially informed and aware and to aid their development into financially capable adults.

On the Money introduces financial topics and dilemmas via a book of fictional stories.  The project involves four well known Scottish children's writers - Carnegie Medal-winning author Theresa Breslin, former stand-up comic Jonathan Meres, rising star Nicola Morgan and Alison Prince, the well-loved author of over 40 children’s books for all ages. They were commissioned to write four stories that incorporated or touched on areas such as the moral dilemmas relating to finance, debt, wants and needs together with entrepreneurship and money management.  Drafts of the stories were piloted at the end of last year, in 10 primary schools in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Renfrewshire.  Following excellent feedback from pupils and teachers the stories were edited and have now been printed and bound in one book called On the Money.

Each of the four stories that make up the book has its own particular financial theme. No Change by Jonny Meres highlights issues around learning to save and earning interest; Alison Prince’s story Funny Money is about managing money and getting out of debt; Down the Pan by Theresa Breslin deals with fundraising and enterprise; and Charlie Fly and the Nice Dream by Nicola Morgan looks at the financial implications of running a business.

To make the stories truly accessible to as many children as possible, a DVD has been produced which includes a talking book for the visually impaired; British Sign Language for those who are deaf and hard of hearing; and also a talking book in Gaelic.  It is believed that this is the first time that such additional resources are made available at the same time as the written book. 

The DVD will form part of a teacher resource which has been developed to support the book.  Teachers will be able to use the stories and the support materials in a way that stretches right across the curriculum - from maths to drama to reading.

The project’s launch will be marked officially on Tuesday 19 June at a gala event at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, compered by Jonathan Meres and featuring dramatic interpretations of On The Money stories by children from St Philomena’s Primary School in Glasgow, Royal High Primary School and Donaldson’s College in Edinburgh and Glasgow Gaelic School.

60000 copies of the book have been printed and will be distributed this year to every primary school in Scotland, via local authorities, with the ultimate aim of one set of books per school. Copies of the books and DVDs are also to be made available in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A downloadable audio version and PDF of the stories in English are available at

www.LTScotland.org.uk/onthemoney.  A PDF of the Gaelic version will follow shortly. 

Anne Gunther, Chief Executive of Standard Life Bank Limited, said, “We have worked with schools for over 15 years in the area of financial education but this is definitely one of the most interesting and creative projects we have been involved with to date. We wanted to help young people develop positive attitudes and behaviours towards money, and to us there was no better place to start than in primary schools. 

“This then gave us the challenge of how to make financial education a compelling topic for this age group.  For us the key was storytelling.  The ‘On the Money’ stories are very entertaining and as you can imagine, bring fun and humour to a dry subject so learning is all the easier.”

Jim Lally, director of The Scottish Centre for Financial Education, part of Learning and Teaching Scotland, said: “This is an exciting project which has inspired the teachers and children involved from the outset.

“We want to give schools access to high quality materials for learning about financial matters.  ‘On the Money’ is without doubt an excellent example of this.

“This resource illustrates our commitment to developing literacy and numeracy and will help take away some of the barriers to developing financial capability for a large number of our young people.”

Philippa Cochrane of Scottish Book Trust, project manager for On The Money, said: “The idea of this project was to deliver some very important messages in a fun and interesting way and there is no better medium than short stories to achieve that. Stories enable children to engage empathetically with issues. Kids become involved with characters and events in stories in a way that’s simply not possible when they are being taught about a concept such as financial awareness by parents and teachers.

“All this has been made possible by the quality, commitment and experience of the authors involved and our partners Standard Life and Learning Teaching Scotland. Scotland has an incredibly deep and talented pool of children’s writers currently and the four authors involved in On The Money are among the very best. Our authors are a fantastic national resource and part of our remit is to encourage children to engage with those authors at every opportunity. On The Money is a fabulous example of how that process of kids engaging with stories and with literature can help their development on various fronts, including numeracy and financial awareness.”

Arran-based author Alison Prince commented, “I am delighted to be taking part in this project.  It is fantastic to be involved with an initiative where I can work directly with young readers and hear what they really think about this important skills area.  I hope that my story will play a part in helping children stay in control of their finances in the years to come.”

On the Money will be officially launched at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh on Tuesday 19 June 2007.

The project is sponsored by Standard Life and has been developed in partnership with Scottish Book Trust and Learning and Teaching Scotland.