Does an 18-year-old boy who starts at university or in an FP and starts managing money know how to open a bank account? Ask for a card? How well do you know how these financial services work? This is the question that Javier Sierra, professor of Applied Economics at the University of Salamanca, tries to answer through a survey involving around thirty secondary education institutions in Castilla y León.
“On the one hand, we want to measure the level of financial education of young people and see if there are differences in the initial culture and learning level in the different branches of the Baccalaureate. On the other hand, we want to measure the effect that active learning can have on help them improve their learning.
Basically, it tries to scientifically measure whether financial education improves more by imparting knowledge through practical simulations than by simply doing it theoretically.. This research was funded by a grant from the BBVA Edufin Research Grants program. A help that was important to be able to achieve its objectives and to be able to bring this methodology to many more institutes.
“The support was very important for two reasons. To be able to start and implement the project, since without the financial support it would have been impossible to achieve the goals we aspire to. Secondly, it is important to encourage the participation of educational centers, because they have said that when they see that there is support from an important institution behind it, they believe it is worth investing in».
Javier Sierra hopes this research will serve to open the door for larger studies along the same lines. For example, what happens in Castilla y León could be compared to other autonomous communities. And it is that for this professor of applied economics it is impossible to understand the world of finance without the educational component.
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