Description of the programme

The Assessing Financial Capability Outcomes (AFCO) youth pilot aimed to establish whether combining financial education with experiential learning, provided through access to in-school banking facilities, would help improve children’s financial knowledge and behaviour.

There were two components to the programme: financial education and access to an in-school bank or credit union branch. The impact of these two components were tested alone as well as in combination. Approximately half of the schools in each site had access to an in-school bank or credit union.

The financial education delivered was adapted from the Council on Economic Education’s Financial Fitness for Life curriculum and focused mainly on savings, financial decision-making, and money management.

The financial education lessons were delivered by classroom teachers in batches of five or six lessons, each lasting 45 minutes. Prior to delivery, teachers underwent training on the content of the lessons and were provided with all of the necessary materials.

The study

This study began in the 2011/12 academic year with 4th and 5th grade students in one US school district and continued in the next academic year with the new intake of 4th grade students. In the second year of the pilot, a second district was added to the programme. This second site offered a larger overall population than the first site, as well as a more ethnically diverse setting and a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students.

The intervention utilised a control group at both field sites. Students were either assigned to the treatment group that received financial education or the control group who did not, on the basis of classroom or teacher-based cohorts of students.

All students undertook assessment before the start of the programme and again after the programme ended. This pre- and post-programme measurement included a 13-point financial literacy quiz and other questions to measure attitudes, beliefs, and experiences held by students regarding financial issues.

Participants at the first site were administered the assessment for a third time approximately one year on from completing the programme, allowing for the persistence of any effects to be tested.

Key findings

The evaluation found positive impacts on programme completion in relation to the following outcomes:

• Financial behaviour: evidence also showed that access to in-school bank accounts increased banking activity, although the sample this finding was drawn from was small. Where a $25 incentive to open an in-school bank account was provided this resulted in an 18 per cent increase in the creation of new accounts.
• Financial capability (connection): students with access to in-school bank accounts were more likely to open their own accounts.
• Financial capability (mindset): the financial education produced a modest increase in all participants’ perceptions of how easy it is to save money. There was also a larger increase in how much students believed banks offer services that are useful to them. Access to an in-school bank account improved financial attitudes about saving and financial knowledge (although the impact of financial education was stronger).
• Financial capability (ability): students who undertook the financial education improved by an average of two points on the thirteen-point assessment (in comparison to students who did not receive the financial education). However, there was no evidence to show that access to an in-school bank had a direct impact on the financial knowledge gained by children. In one of the sites where results were followed up with further assessment after a twelve-month period, the evaluators found that improvements in outcomes persisted for each measure a year on after assessment.

Points to consider

• The authors state that the programme’s successes were reliant on effective teacher training and that this required teachers’ commitment as well as a significant amount of their time.
• The programme used a staggered design, in which classroom or teacher-based cohorts of students were randomly selected to receive financial education during the study, and other students received it after the study was completed.
• Having a bank account was not randomly assigned, meaning the students that already had bank accounts or opened accounts during the study likely had different characteristics than students without a bank account. This means that the results relating to the impact of an in-school bank account are less certain.

Full report

Full research report