The aim of this project is to get students from 13 to 18 years of 6 European schools to acquire the knowledge and the ability to understand fundamental economic-financial principles supporting students in the formation of basic skills and key competences to become active, informed citizens able to participate in civic and social life and face with awareness and knowledge the choices concerning their inclusion in the labour market. The project is spread over 2 years marked by educational and laboratory activities related to the themes of the value of money and its conscious use, personal financial planning, the value of savings and tools and financial investments to create and finance a new business, considering the risks deriving from wrong investments, and finally how to invest in social security thinking about the future. Therefore, this project will help to build a training course towards citizenship education. With this project the schools intend to promote financial education as a curricular approach that completely integrates the disciplinary curricula (economics, finance, business administration, maths, History, language, IT, civics) with the long-term goal of creating a new informed and aware economic citizenship. The target groups are students, teachers and staff in schools. All our activities are student-oriented, useful and feasible by them, designed to increase their skills and financial knowledge; the teachers also must improve their training and teaching abilities. The aim of the project is also to facilitate the learning and skills of our weakest students and to motivate through a learning process based on experience and between peers; at the same way the most motivated and capable students have the opportunity to achieve more, and above all to benefit by participating in this project at the European level. Participation in each of the 4 LTTAs is a unique experience for students, a key opportunity for their training as each European exchange will encourage reflection on their needs compared with those ones of European peers, on the priorities set and the orientations expected for their future employment. Each LTTA will constitute an incomparable environment of work and experience for the motivation, engagement and learning. Likewise, the 2 short-term joint staff training events offer teachers important opportunities to exchange good practices, to integrate methodologies, contents and tools that will complement each other in a transversal curriculum of financial education in a European perspective with an impact on traditional school activities. Two of relevant concrete results of the teaching activities, apart those ones of the LTTA, are a Handbook for a transversal approach to financial education and the Dictionary of financial education. All the products will be visible and made available to everyone on the ETwinning platform and on the websites of each partner school.
The project involved about 500 students aged 13 to 18 coming from different social backgrounds and attending six European schools ranging from Lower secondary school (up to the age of 16), Gymnasium, technical and vocational schools in various fields: economy, tourism, hotel and catering industry, nursery and administration and finance, technical economics, marketing. All these schools agree that participation in European projects is a key tool for mobility, integration and improvement of their teaching methodologies. The main objective of the project was to provide students with basic financial education in order that they acquire the knowledge and ability to understand fundamental economic-financial principles, basic skills and key competences to become active, informed citizens able to participate in civic and social life and face the choices concerning their inclusion in the labour market. The project activities started with the What kind of person am I? questionnaire to know the relationship of each student with money and then introduce the topics of the activities for the achievement of four main objectives: 1) the management of the “pocket money” for a conscious use of it in the future; 2) Facing the challenge of finding my job; 3) Getting to know how a bank works and how to finance a new business for young people; 4) Investing money to ensure one’s own future. For these objectives, each school carried out specific didactic activities documented in four Didactic Units presented and shared during the meetings and finally collected in “A cross curricular approach to the financial and entrepreneurial education”, an Ebook that contains the best teaching practices for each topic carried out. Four Financial Tests, on the OECD PISA model, have been administered before and after each DU to verify incoming knowledge and subsequently those ones learned. The final results show that there was a significant increase in knowledge and skills for each level of measurement, and in relation to the expected objectives confirm the effectiveness of the activities undertaken in the two years. A Financial Dictionary-Ebook was produced with the financial terms in use in the common language of finance, encountered in the theoretical study, during the experiences and explained by students in mother tongue and in English. A further product was born from the students' creativity, the construction of a Six-Hands Story, as many as there are partners, in which a character imagines his own life; the Story has been transposed into a theatrical Script and performed in the final online meeting. All the activities, structured within different disciplines (Business economics, Finance, Math, Law, History, Languages, IT, Civics) have been carried out in the most realistic situations possible and in different contexts referred to home, family, personal, working situations and social contexts. The combination of study sessions with practical, labour-oriented experiences, implemented through collaboration with external experts, has helped the students to move from what they have learnt up to the application of their knowledge and skills in their daily life or in their future life. As far as the participation of the weakest people, teachers have privileged the use of a clear and simple language, of games, interactive activities, simulations and board games in which active participation, analysis of real situations linked to the economy, has facilitated the acquisition of the main financial tools and basic financial concepts. All the best teaching practices carried out and shared by the partner teachers and with financial sector experts have been integrated into the curricula of each school; TwinSpace and each school webs ensure accessibility and visibility of the teaching practices and products; each school remains in an active dialogue with the external experts in order to integrate and implement its financial curriculum. The capitalization of the know-how of six European schools will allow the teachers to have a new starting point for renewed educational paths, their willingness to integrate the results of this project into their curricula to prepare their students to compete on the European labour market.