'It could help us later': Bank of France teaches schoolchildren how to manage their budgets

Lucie de Perthuis 10:43 am, March 24, 2023

It's not easy to manage your budget on a daily basis, especially in the face of inflation. But it can be learned, and from an early age. This is precisely the purpose of Financial Education Week, the 11th edition of which is organized by the Bank of France currently in schools. Europe 1 participated in a workshop with a CE2 class.

"It's a bit new for us"

What is money used for, what form can it take, or how to manage a budget? So many questions that the students were able to ask themselves around a quiz, crossword puzzles or riddles. And from the top of their ten years, they already seem to understand the stakes. "There will surely be big expenses," says one child, saying what he learned that day "could help us for later." For one of his classmates, "it's a little new for us because we see mom and dad using it, but otherwise, we don't really know what it's used for sometimes."

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Virginie Rousseau works in the financial education department of the Banque de France. Its mission: to raise awareness among children through fun activities. "There are very concrete things and I hope that indeed, it is a workshop that will be useful to them for years to come. If we manage to raise awareness from an early age, we hope to have fewer accidents in life, to arouse reflexes on the budgetary and financial grounds so that everyone manages their daily lives as well as possible."

Next step for his students in fourth grade: they will follow a program to obtain a budget and financial education passport, with a discovery phase followed by a questionnaire.