IT WAS meant to benefit their students, but a personal finance seminar for teachers ended up benefiting them most when the economy began ailing.
Jointly organised by Citibank and National Institute of Education (NIE), the two-day seminar was aimed at equipping teachers with basic financial literacy knowledge they can pass on to their students. The seminar covered topics ranging from coming up with a personal budget, risk management to investment strategies.
When the economy began to fail, Dr Koh Noi Keng, who is involved in organising the programme, received feedback from teachers who avoided investment errors and escaped from the financial meltdown, thanks to what they learnt at the programme.
Dr Koh, who is president of Commerce Educators in Singapore and an NIE lecturer, explained that the seminar is part of the Ministry Of Education’s aim to raise awareness of financial literacy in schools.
They hope these teachers will then impart their knowledge to students. NIE had received a grant from the education ministry to launch the programme last November. It caught on, and some schools started similar classes for students.
“One of the spin-offs of this seminar is that some schools now roll out their own financial literacy programmes in their schools and organise cluster events to showcase their students’ work in financial literacy,” Dr Koh said.
One such school is Anglo Chinese School (Independent). With support from Citibank and NIE, it launched the Financial Literacy Integrated Programme (FLIP) for their Secondary Three students as part of their coursework fulfilment.
105 students were taught by teachers who had taken the NIE course.
These students showcased their knowledge in financial literacy by displaying their projects in an intra-school competition on 22 October.
Norhafizah bte Mohamed Alias, 19, a second-year NIE student, expressed interest in participating in future seminars like this.
“By organising financial literacy programmes in schools on our own instead of employing external companies to do so, we will be able to engage our students better,” she said.
