Manchester Schools Teach Kids Financial Fitness From Age 10

Ten-year-olds recently performed a play about a loan shark in a school hall in Openshaw, East Manchester, to an audience of parents who weren’t expecting it. The kids had spent the day practicing, creating imaginary sets, fighting over roles, and, in between, learning about compound interest, responsible borrowing, and the importance of saving even a tiny amount each month. Some of them most likely knew more about debt than the adults watching them by the time they performed Fairytale Money Troubles at the end of the afternoon.

Basically, that’s the point. Manchester Credit Union, a financial cooperative that has been helping savers and borrowers in Greater Manchester for more than 30 years, has been implementing a program called Bee Smart with Money in local primary schools. In collaboration with Altru, a creative education company, the program offers day-long drama experiences that make financial literacy feel more like something worth paying attention to than a PSHE worksheet. Over a hundred kids from Openshaw, Benchill, and Wythenshawe have experienced it thus far. In Greater Manchester, a total of eleven schools are planned. It targets precisely the age group that research increasingly indicates is the right one to target, making it modest in scope but focused in ambition.

In terms of financial literacy, the UK is ranked 15th out of 29 nations. When Manchester Credit Union CEO Mandy Wilcock discusses the purpose of this program, she frequently cites that figure with a tone of subdued annoyance. The United Kingdom is not a poor nation. It has some of the top universities in the world and a financial services industry with hundreds of thousands of workers. However, the typical British child grows up with a remarkably limited understanding of practical financial concepts, such as how credit operates, what a budget is, and what happens when you borrow money from an unregulated source. In 2026, the gap between what young people need to know and what they are taught in school is still so great that a Manchester non-profit credit union felt obliged to close it by holding drama workshops in elementary school halls.

It turns out that ten is a good age. This time frame is consistently recognized by research on child development and financial literacy as a true window—young enough for the lessons to mold habits rather than challenge them, yet old enough to understand budgeting and the distinction between needs and wants. The value of money can be taught to a five-year-old. A ten-year-old can comprehend that loans have terms that are worth reading and that saving three pounds a week for a month yields greater returns than spending it right away. It’s more difficult to introduce the concepts at fifteen without the defensiveness that comes with thinking you should already be aware of them. Children in Years 5 and 6 engaged with material that would have seemed abstract two years ago and tedious two years later, according to the teachers at Benchill Primary and Higher Openshaw who took part.

Higher Openshaw Primary teacher Miss Sarah Burke said the kids were having “a ball.” Most people probably don’t think of financial education like that. However, the drama format generates stakes in a way that a textbook does not. The abstract idea of debt becomes something you feel, at least momentarily, in your chest when you’re portraying a character who has borrowed money from a dishonest lender and is unable to make the payments. Drama “ignites curiosity” and provides children with tools to envision various outcomes, according to Kate Cotterell of Altru. That’s not merely effective teaching. It’s the whole process by which financial confidence is developed, including the ability to plan ahead, simulate outcomes, and ask “what if I do this instead.”

Here, too, the larger context is important. According to a 2025 study by the Yorkshire Building Society, 95% of parents of school-age children believe that financial education is crucial. Organizations operating in this field have long been frustrated by the discrepancy between the nearly universal parental demand and the actual delivery of financial education in schools. Resources to close the gap have been developed by the Money and Pensions Service, Young Enterprise’s Money Heroes program, and platforms like MoneyTime. However, reaching children at scale requires schools to make time for it, and that time is constantly competing with everything else. A practical solution to a structural issue is Manchester Credit Union’s strategy of bringing the experience to the school instead of waiting for the school to come to it.

It’s difficult to ignore how simple Bee Smart with Money’s main message is: save a little, borrow sensibly, and know who you’re dealing with before you sign anything. These concepts are not complicated. To transmit them, they shouldn’t need a fairytale villain and a drama workshop. However, for a large number of children growing up in Wythenshawe or Openshaw, where household financial stress is a lived reality rather than an academic subject, it is more than most of them would receive to have these concepts introduced in a school hall at age ten—with agency, with fun, and the opportunity to perform the lesson rather than receive it.

According to Mandy Wilcock, she intends to run the program once a year. That goal is reasonable and likely undervalued considering the cost of not investing in this type of education.