Ed Balls’ announcement that, from 2011, personal finance lessons will become compulsory for students hasn’t come soon enough for the savvy savers at MyBnk, the first ever FSA-approved, youth-led online banking scheme.
With bank branches in three London schools, MyBnk is launching a further three as part of the current Global Entrepreneurship Week (November 16-22). Students at King Solomon High, Essex, Leigh Technology Academy, Kent, and Swanlea School, Tower Hamlets, now have access to start-up funds to help turn their business ideas into reality.
Potential borrowers will be subject to an application process with a number of conditions attached. For example the business must not involve anything illegal or harmful and the loan (at a limit decided by the school) has to be paid back within a set time. But entrepreneurs will have access to MyBanker loan managers and mentors and they can partner up to borrow more for joint activities. Of course they get to keep any profits.
Arthur Barzey, head of business at Haringey’s Woodside school, one of the first to adopt the initiative, said: “The MyBnk financial education programme provides students with the opportunity to learn many different skills including leadership skills and how to take risks. The success of the scheme speaks for itself: the kids are turning out in droves – I think we have six or seven different businesses running in the school right now. ”
“Knowing that 90 per cent of British adults have never received proper financial education it seems more than overdue that finance lessons are becoming compulsory for every student,“ said Lily Lapenna CEO and founder of MyBnk.
For more than three years, the educational charity’s flagship programme, ‘MyBnk-in-a-Box’ has been instilling healthy financial habits in 9 to 24-year-olds through workshops, seminars and assemblies. To date some 20,000 young people from more than 50 schools and youth clubs have mastered the principles of budgeting, saving, debt awareness and taxation.
