In collaborating on a National Financial Education Curriculum for preparatory level up to Grade 12, the Bank of Papua New Guinea has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Centre for Excellence in Financial Inclusion (CEFI) and the Department of Education.
Loi M. Bakani, CMG, the bank’s governor, signed the agreement with Dr. U Uke Kombra, the Department of Education Secretary to promote Financial Inclusion partnership under the theme of “Financial Education for a Better Future.”
This initiative is to educate school children about income generation, money management, budgeting, savings, and investment.
Governor Bakani said that the curriculum shows financial competency and social responsibility.
“BPNG has invested in technological innovations to expand access to financial products and services. These initiatives include the Regulatory Sandbox, Retail Electronic Payments System and Digital Identification Project which are key drivers of the financial products and services. Building Financial Education into our education curriculum will complement these innovations and allow our young generation to acquire knowledge and skills to build responsible financial behaviour and competency.” Mr Bakani said.
For Department of Education Secretary Dr Uke Kombra, “Jointly DoE and CEFI will ensure teachers are given specialized in-service financial education training and will be certified accordingly."
He added, “We will ensure necessary arrangements are in place for project pre-planning and implementation in order to achieve an effective roll-out of the financial education curriculum. The project team consisting of curriculum development specialist, CEFI and BPNG will provide technical oversight throughout the development, assessment, and delivery of the Curriculum.”
The project covers the sequence and content scope of the financial education school curriculum. This will be developed into their Student Activity Books and Teacher Resource Manuals from Prep to Grade 12 and for each section of development.
Before rolling this out to the whole country, this curriculum will first be tested in 48 schools in 2021 and 2022.
