National Curriculum Roll-out pilot for Cufa and Teachers Mutual Bank Limited: partnership for Cambodian Children’s Financial Literacy in a country of two million students
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Children’s Financial Literacy program, Teachers Mutual Bank staff Corin Millais and Nichole Banks attended the stakeholder event in Phnom Penh with the Cufa Board, representatives from the Royal Government of Cambodia and other sector stakeholders.
Cufa, DFAT and the Cambodian Government are examining options for a national roll-out of CFL with various stakeholders including the Asian Development Bank (ADB), National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) and Ministry of Education Youth and Sports (MoEYS) to reach 7,228 primary schools and approximately 2 million students. A three-month Pilot Program in primary and secondary schools is already underway, called “Integrating Financial Education in Cambodian School Curriculum."
Integrating Financial Education in the Cambodian School Curriculum - the Cufa perspective
Through the CFL, Cufa has been in a position to use grass-roots learnings to inform national financial education in Cambodia. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has funded us to implement a project to integrate financial education in the National Cambodian School Curriculum, which speaks volumes of the significance of increasing financial literacy in Cambodia and the importance of financial education in promoting fair financial markets, particularly as markets modernise.
Cufa has been implementing this project since December 2019 together with the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS). The impetus for this project is the priority placed on increasing financial literacy in the Cambodian Financial Sector Development Strategy 2016-2025.
The strategy emphasises the importance of education in terms of increasing awareness of products offered in financial markets (and other areas) and understanding their nature, benefits and advantages, and costs and liabilities.
Specifically, the strategy envisioned the opportunity to target the ‘teaching of financial literacy in general education curriculums of the national education system’. Cufa’s expertise and grass-roots programming of the CFL program in Cambodia for the last 10 years gave Cufa the crucial on-the-ground experience to create an impactful program in consultation with NBC and MoEYS.
Cufa is developing a Financial Education Framework which sets the priorities and parameters of integrating financial education in the Cambodian School Curriculum. The initial phase of integrating financial education in the school curriculum sees it integrated over two school years, across two to three subjects to develop robust financial literacy.