Planning 10: Finances – Giving Young People Financial Skills for Life

Planning 10 is a mandatory Grade 10 course in British Columbia. It’s designed to give young people the financial life skills they’ll need as adults.

Young Canadians face a complicated financial future. We want to ensure that students acquire the knowledge, skills and confidence they’ll need to begin planning for life after high school, to make sound financial choices and to protect themselves from scams.

The BCSC developed a comprehensive, easy-to-use and fun multimedia resource for the Finances component of Planning 10. “Financial Life Skills for Planning 10” includes:

• Teacher binder of lesson plans, student worksheets and materials
• DVD on the investment process
• Posters
• Website: http://www.bcsc.bc.ca/Planning10/ 
• Province-wide teacher-training program

Since we launched our resource in November 2004, demand for it continues to grow. Over 1,000 teachers have requested it and teachers in 59 out of 60 school districts are using it. To date, we have trained over 430 teachers across BC.

In January 2005, the resource received the Provincially Recommended status from the BC Ministry of Education. This means that the resource is on the Ministry’s list of recommended learning resources .

In May 2005 and 2006, we surveyed teachers who had requested our resource. We wanted to know how they used it, whether they thought it was an effective teaching tool and if they had suggestions for any improvements:

• Over eighty percent rated the resource positively
• Close to ninety percent of those who responded said they intended to use the resource again
• Many of them said they personally learned something by using our materials

BC teachers were instrumental in creating this resource. The establishment of a teacher advisory group from different regions of BC gave direction on the content and the educational approach of the resource. The teachers also reviewed draft materials.

In July 2006 we measured the effectiveness of our resource materials with 42 high school students:

• Thirty six students gave the course either an A or a B
• Almost all the topics were seen as interesting and easy to understand
• Students are much more likely to see financial planning as personally relevant to them and much more likely to hold attitudes that support critical thinking

Our resource has won a number of awards including:

• 2005 Gold from the Canadian Marketing Association
• 2005 Golden Reel from the Media Communications Association International (for the DVD)
• 2006 Gold Quill Merit from the International Association of Business Communicators