What is One Million Kids?
You might be surprised to know that the Commonwealth Bank has been teaching kids financial skills for nearly 80 years. Since then, a few things have changed, in particular the learning behaviour of kids and our complex world of finances.
We've altered our educational programs to suit this changing environment, along with the goals we'd like to achieve, too. In fact, we're now investing over $40 million to improve the financial literacy of one million kids by 2015.
Our commitment is a significant investment across a range of initiatives specifically developed for every school age, and collectively managed as the One Million Kids project.
You can find out more about our various financial literacy programs by exploring this site.
The Student Banking Program was introduced to schools Australia-wide. In 1932, a School Banking machine was unveiled at Wirrawee Public School, Sydney. This machine was handmade and was the first of its kind.
The Dollarmites Club was introduced to appeal to kids under 12 years. During the first year, almost 290,000 accounts were opened and $18 million was deposited.
Although we've been teaching kids about money for some time with programs such as School Banking, we took financial education one step further by creating the Commonwealth Bank Foundation, established specifically to encourage developments in education, in particular to build the financial literacy of young Australians.
The Commonwealth Bank Foundation partnered with Monash University and the Ipsos-Eureka Strategic Research Institute to measure the financial literacy of Australians. The results highlighted the importance of continued investment in grass roots financial literacy programs.
During the same year, the Foundation began offering Financial Literacy Grants to secondary schools to help develop the financial skills of teenagers. Each year, 100 grants of $3,500 were awarded to schools that proposed an effective, innovative and relevant financial education program for consideration.
The Australian Financial Literacy Assessment (AFLA) was a tool for teachers to develop and assess students' skills in financial literacy and to identify students' individual financial literacy strengths and weaknesses.
The assessment was designed to help schools measure students' learning, competency and understanding of financial literacy and identify improvements in these areas over time. It was made available for the first time in 2005 through to 2008 at no cost to students in Years 9-10 throughout Australia.
The highly successful StartSmart program was introduced. Since then, over 250,000 students have participated in StartSmart, making it the largest school-based financial literacy program of its kind.
The StartSmart program was extended to primary school-aged children. Aligned with state curricula, it teaches children practical skills to manage their money.
We launched Coinland, a virtual world where children can learn about the benefits of earning, saving and investing money by undertaking a series of tasks, designed to help them develop strong financial literacy skills.
The Commonwealth Bank Foundation revisited the research to look again at the financial literacy of the nation. Financial literacy helps us to make effective decisions about earning, spending, borrowing and saving and the results provided timely insights for us all to build from.
StartSmart
StartSmart is a Commonwealth Bank Foundation initiative that offers school kids a guided approach to learning about money in the classroom. The program is fully funded by the Foundation and has been developed in consultation with education experts. It's also aligned with the school curricula.