A Memorandum of Understanding was signed yesterday to collaborate on a national financial education curriculum for preparatory level up to Grade 12 students in the country.
The partnership will be between the Bank of Papua New Guinea (the Bank), the Centre for Excellence in Financial Inclusion (CEFI) and the Department of Education.
BPNG Governor, Loi Bakani, signed with Department of Education Secretary, Dr Uke Kombra, to promote financial inclusion partnership under the theme - Financial education for a better future.
The initiative is to integrate financial education as a relevant needs-based curriculum to be integrated into the existing Standard Based Curriculum (SBC), with the objective of educating students about money management, income generation, saving and budgeting, investments and credit.
Bakani said the module presents a relevant curriculum that facilitates the learning of social responsibility and financial competency.
“BPNG has invested in technological innovations to expand the access of 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 younger generation to acquire knowledge and skills to build responsible financial behaviour and competency.”
Education Secretary, Dr Kombra, said: “Jointly, DoE and CEFI will ensure teachers are given specialised in-service financial education training and will be certified accordingly.
“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 will work on developing the content scope and sequence of the financial education school curriculum to be developed into Teacher Resource Manuals and Student Activity Books suited to each phase of development and from Prep to Grade 12.
The financial education curriculum will be piloted in 48 schools in 2021 and 2022 before it can be rolled out to all schools in the country.
(From left: Department of Education Secretary, Dr Uke Kombra, and BPNG Governor and Chairman of CEFI, Loi Bakani, with the signed MoU)