ASIC chairman David Knott called for a national partnership of stakeholders to improve financial literacy levels across Australia, following the publication of the report in Money Manager last month.
"Younger Australians especially must be given the right tools to deal with financial issues. The poor literacy rankings for the 18-to-24-year-old age group shows that we must focus part of our efforts on the teaching of financial literacy in our schools," he says.
ASIC has commissioned a curriculum map of the opportunities that exist for financial literacy education in Australian secondary schools, as well as a stocktake of the resources available for such programs and will release a discussion paper on the results next month.
"(ASIC) believes every student should leave school with the necessary financial skills to be confident and informed consumers," Mr Knott says. "We are at present exploring models for fostering financial literacy education in schools."
