Jane Wrightson, Retirement Commissioner
Imagine it’s the year 2050.
Thirty-year-old New Zealanders are making decisions about work, housing, saving and investing with confidence. They understand compound interest. They know the difference between needs and wants. They can spot risky debt, ask the right questions and plan for the long-term. Not because they’re financial experts, but because financial education has been part of their learning since they were five years old.
For these adults, financial education wasn’t a one-off lesson or a lucky add-on. It was a clear, progressive part of schooling at every age and stage; relevant, practical and connected to the real world.
That’s the future New Zealand is now deliberately building in 2026 with the long-awaited introduction of compulsory financial education. Financial education will be included in Mathematics and Social Sciences and will thus cover 100% of the student population until Year 11.
Now the focus is shifting from whether schools should teach financial education to how it is delivered. There’s a lot of chatter about this – I think because we all went to school we all think we’re experts. The more I’ve learned about curriculum development, the more I realise how little I knew about a really complicated process. Let me introduce you to what’s actually happening right now.
We at the Retirement Commission know that if financial education starts early, your chances of better financial security in retirement increase. But to teach this consistently in schools nationwide, it must be baked into the curriculum with the right financial concepts for children at the right age. So when the Government announced financial education was to be compulsory, we corralled the curriculum experts at the Ministry of Education and current school providers from the financial services sector into a unique partnership to provide clear direction. It’s fair to say we’ve all learned heaps from each other.
We’ve collectively provided practical feedback on the draft Maths and Social Sciences curricula and have now published two detailed and practical Financial Education Implementation Guides which show what students need to learn about money from ages 5 to 16. The guides are aligned with international standards but designed for New Zealand schools. They show how financial learning builds progressively and how it connects to curriculum outcomes.
Adults rarely remember how learning actually happened at school. We forget that complex skills are built slowly and deliberately, step by step. This is why adults can think we’re experts on schools: we acquired the knowledge and skills, like how to read, but don’t always understand how teachers break down the development milestones into small chunks of learning. We didn’t start by reading Chidgey at five; we started with building block readers.
Financial education is the same. It isn’t about throwing complex concepts at children too early; it’s about relevance and building knowledge. Our guides break down what each age group needs to understand. You wouldn’t talk to a 5 year old about insurance, but you would talk to them about keeping their money safe. In the same breath, a 6 year old might struggle with the concept of debt but should be able to grasp that money is limited and you need to ensure you have enough to pay for your needs or wants. For a 10 year old, financial learning is likely to centre on everyday experiences: financial services like bank accounts, loans and ways to spend and store money.
When learning is coherent and cumulative, by the time students encounter ideas like compound interest and KiwiSaver as teenagers, they’re building on years of prior understanding. That’s how confidence forms and how financial capability becomes embedded – not bolted on and quickly forgotten.
Embedding these skills will live beyond their high school years and become tools that allow them to grow their money over time and make good financial decisions throughout their life to build financial resilience.
Using the Guide for Schools, teachers will be able to plan financial education lessons across year levels, understand progressions from Years 0–13 (how learning develops over time, where a student is now and what the next steps should be), and ensure learning about money is age appropriate and consistent. The Guide for Providers shows the required teaching progressions and offers a guide for planning. It details the resources and programmes currently available to avoid duplication and align initiatives to support teachers.
The guides have been deliberately designed to be accessible to all, to help demystify the curriculum. This is what makes this moment genuinely different: it’s not just that financial education is finally being taken seriously, it’s how we’re going about it. The curriculum and resources are being built collaboratively, with experts at the helm, the wider finance industry and the people who teach, design curricula and deliver financial education in classrooms every day.
Our partners, the main current providers, include ASB, Banqer/Kiwibank, BNZ, Life Education Trust, Money Time, SaVy, Westpac and Young Enterprise Trust. It’s been a groundbreaking collaboration for us all.
There’s now welcome interest from potential new funders and sponsors, and there are clear gaps waiting to be filled, particularly in classroom resources. But it’s important to understand that any idea that’s not clearly aligned to the curriculum, no matter how sparkly, is a waste of investment.
Opportunities like this come around once in a generation. We’ve jumped on the chance to shape how an entire generation of New Zealanders understands money, from their very first year of school. It’s a foundation that will serve generations to come, well beyond 2050.
Through this work, financial education will become as normal as reading and maths: practical, progressive and grounded in real life. It will help young people avoid costly traps, build resilience through uncertainty and make choices that strengthen not just their own futures, but our communities and the economy too.