DigiFinEDU mainly aims to increase primary and lower secondary education pupils’ (9-12 y.o) Financial Literacy (further FinLit) in order to help them become financially resilient adults. To reach this general objective, DigiFinEdu aimed: - To promote the implementation of financial education in primary and lower secondary education - To develop the understanding and predisposition of children (9-12 y.o.) towards money and basic financial concepts: The project aims to improve young children's financial knowledge, behaviour and attitude by providing them new didactical material and an engaging learning experience of gamification. - To improve the readiness and effectiveness of parents and teachers when explaining financial concepts to young children: All project results will include instructions, exercises, training material and content targeted to attain this goal, explaining to them how to transfer it to their pupils, as well. - To increase the inclusion of parents in children’s education process and encourage the mutually beneficial learning environment - To improve the understanding of financial education policies and strategies on a national and international scale and promote policy harmonization at EU level.
The increasing accessibility and complexity of financial services is accentuating individual responsibility on many crucial financial decisions. Starting from this consideration, the EU and other international organizations, like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and UNESCO, engaged in a strong effort to promote the teaching of Financial Literacy across all educational levels. Nonetheless, cross-country reports are still showing inadequate financial competencies. Within this context, COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated pre-existing issues, causing more harm to the wide portion of the population which is not financially resilient. Unfortunately, it appears that also teachers' competencies are hampering the effectiveness of Financial Literacy education, as different studies show their low level of financial competencies and suggest the adoption of further training to enhance their financial knowledge (Harrison et al, 2019; De Moor and Verschetze, 2017). Finally, different researches clearly demonstrated the important role that parents play in determining not just the Financial Literacy of their children, but also their interests, behaviours and attitudes towards money.