Financial education provision mapping 2024: Final report

The provision of financial education for children and young people is key to ensuring we build strong foundations to help everyone make the most of their money and pensions. That is why, in 2020, the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing, coordinated by MaPS, set a national goal to ensure two million more children and young people receive a meaningful financial education by 2030.

The mapping exercise was conducted by Pye Tait and MaPS using information gathered through an online survey from providers and funders of financial education programmes. These include charities, banks, trusts and foundations and public sector bodies. We would like to thank financial education funders and providers for taking part.

Data collection took place between October 2024 and January 2025.

The exercise mapped 110 financial education programmes, with a combined annual spend of c.£13.5 million and combined annual reach of around 7.2 million children and young people. This is approximately 41% of three to 24-year-olds in the UK.

Comparison to the provision mapping undertaken in 2021 is made where feasible and meaningful, as the approach and question design remained largely unchanged. Comparisons have also been reported for the 41 organisations that completed the survey in both 2021 and 2024.

• Financial services organisations continue to be the largest funders of financial education programmes, but reported a slight decrease in spend in real terms since 2021. However, their reach to children and young people remains high. The programmes funded by financial services organisations reached a total of around 5.9 million children and young people, with a total spend of nearly £8.2 million.  
• Funding has increased from the non-financial services private sector, charities or not-for-profit organisations and trusts and foundations, with decreased funding from the public sector. 
• Provision continues to be targeted predominantly at primary school and early secondary school age children, although there are encouraging signs of a small expansion in provision for early years and indeed across all age groups. 
• Whilst a large number of teachers were reached overall, reach to practitioners is limited and has reduced since 2021. The delivery of financial education training to teachers and practitioners was also limited. 
• A greater proportion of programmes have undergone some sort of evaluation compared to 2021 (76% from 69%). Impact evaluations are used by two-thirds of programmes. Despite this progress, evaluation of programmes and long-term impact measurement remains a challenge, with many programmes still struggling to assess their effectiveness beyond immediate engagement. 

This research also identified gaps in financial education provision, such as:

• meeting the needs of children and young people who may be in particular need of financial literacy support, such as those in low-income households or who have special educational needs 
• delivering through community settings and practitioners working with CYP and families to reach beneficiaries outside schools and colleges  
• engaging CYP in more rural areas, and addressing variation in reach to CYP and teachers across the nations of the UK 
• ensuring teachers and practitioners have access to financial education training, helping to improve their confidence in using the resources and services available 
• ensuring programmes’ content or curricula help prepare children and young people to manage and protect their money in a digital world.

We will use the insights from this exercise to inform activity to support progress towards the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing national goals.

We hope it proves valuable for our partner organisations developing policies, strategies and programmes to improve the provision of financial education and the financial wellbeing of children and young people.