Interesting Practice

Key Facts

MoneySense is the Royal Bank's free and impartial financial education programme for 5-18 year-olds in the UK.

In the 22 years that we've been providing financial education, we've helped around 4.5 million young people to understand money and will help 1 million more through our MoneySense programme by the end of 2018.

Our interactive content is based on real-life money moments to make learning about money, real, relevant and fun, both in the classroom and at home.

There are four key parts to the programme:

• Educational games, videos and interactives for young people
• Downloadable lesson plans and classroom resources for teachers
• Fun money activities that parents can do with their children
• Classroom workshops delivered with the help of our extensive network of employee volunteers.

The content has been developed in consultation with parents, young people, teachers and other education experts; it has received the prestigious Financial Education Quality Mark from Young Enterprise, and is aligned with the national curriculum.

How it developed

MoneySense is a core part of our community programmes at the Royal Bank, which focus on improving financial capability and enterprise development in our communities. We believe that these are the areas where we can make the biggest difference.

In 2015, we took the opportunity to re-launch the programme, with updated content to a wider age group (MoneySense was previously only available to secondary schools) and taking learning from school into the home.

In order to measure success, we established key performance indicators (KPIs). These are:

• To reach 1 million more young people by the end of 2018
• To get 65% of all UK secondary schools and 55% of all UK primary schools to register for MoneySense by the end of 2018
• To have 2,000 registered employee volunteers each year

What pupils gained and how effective the project was

MoneySense has been widely used since re-launch. After 18 months we had achieved the following across the UK and Ireland:

• 12,000 registered teachers
• 4,500 registered employee volunteers
• Reached 650,000 pupils
• Achieved an average of 10,000 unique website users every month

In addition:

• 9 in 10 young people who learned about money management in school said it was useful

And, teacher feedback tells us that MoneySense is making a real difference:

• 7 in 10 teachers of 8-16 year-olds 'agree or strongly agree' that knowledge and understanding of money had improved among students
• 1 in 5 felt their knowledge (18%) and confidence (19%)in delivering financial education had increased

As well as quantitative feedback, we also collate qualitative feedback from MoneySense stakeholders, to reassure us that we're getting it right:

Is it sustainable?

MoneySense is a sustainable programme that has been running for over 22 years now, making it the longest-running programme of its kind in the UK.

It is also an ongoing programme, with curriculum-linked content updated all year round. We will continue to evolve it based on research and evaluation and are committed to continue to help young people become the confident money managers of the future.

What costs were incurred?

MoneySense was relaunched in 2015 with monetary investment to create a digitally innovative programme.

Did it involve other partners?

We partner with specialist agencies to create and design the MoneySense educational content and to carry out ongoing research and evaluation to measure its impact.

Our partners include:

• The Young Enterprise charity
• The Money Advice Service (MAS)

Our extensive network of employee volunteers, who help to deliver MoneySense workshops in schools, also support the programme.

What support did you receive?

We received a variety of support from the partners listed above.

Useful Information