ii on a mission to find Britain’s best money teachers

Personal Finance Teacher of the Year Awards 2023: a £25,000 prize pot for winning schools, and a new category to celebrate teaching assistants.

• To nominate a teacher, email teacher@ii.co.uk by 11 September 2023
• Teachers can nominate themselves: email teacher@ii.co.uk with lesson plan and supporting statement by 29 September
• New category in 2023 to also celebrate Teaching Assistants

interactive investor, the UK’s second-largest investment platform for private investors, is once again on a mission to find Britain’s best money teachers for its Personal Finance Teacher of the Year Awards 2023. Awards are open to teachers in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

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This is one of the most prestigious awards to recognise creative money education, with a prize of £25,000 to be shared among the winning teachers’ schools across the UK. 

Covering both primary and secondary schools, past winners have come from a diverse range of schools, including special educational needs schools. This is something ii is keen to point out, given young people with SEND are more at risk from escalating online financial scams, according to Young Enterprise. 

This year interactive investor is also supporting entries for a new category to honour the most inspirational support teacher/teaching assistant who has gone above and beyond to support pupils to become more confident in money management skills, perhaps to cement maths concepts.  

The challenge of encouraging confidence in mathematics was highlighted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s announcement that pupils in England should study maths up to the age of 18 to better equip them for the modern workplace. 

Whether learning Pythagoras up to 18 is useful for more than just engineers or budding snooker players is up for debate. interactive investor believes that real-world money skills to help the next generation build financial resilience could be far more appealing. And with a continuing cost-of-living crisis affecting so many families, learning to manage money and handle a budget is a vitally important skill young people will need.

Richard Wilson, chief executive of interactive investor, says: “In a world of buy now pay later, increasingly sophisticated scams, and where young people are more aware of cryptocurrency than any other investment*, good money skills are essential. 

“Young people are navigating a far more complex set of financial rules than their parents and grandparents ever did, but while the provision of money lessons in schools remains patchy, there is some fantastic work being done. Please help us find the best money teachers of 2023.

“We want to recognise the amazing, but all too often uncelebrated, contributions that our teachers and support staff make to help young people go out into the world with an understanding of how to manage their money.”

How to enter

To nominate a teacher or teaching assistant, parents, carers, or pupils should email teacher@ii.co.uk with the teacher’s name along with the name and address of the school, by 11 September 2023. We will then approach the teacher and ask them to submit their lesson plan and brief supporting statement by 29 September 2023.

Topics might include budgeting, investment, cash savings, interest rates, credit, and much more, from reception right the way up to sixth form. 

Teachers can also nominate themselves, by emailing teacher@ii.co.uk with a lesson plan and supporting statement by 29 September 2023. Teaching assistants are also asked to submit evidence of how they have helped communicate money concepts to pupils, and they may also share lesson plans.

Personal finance is still a relatively small part of curriculums across the UK, but the skills taught are vital. Through this award, ii is on the lookout for teachers who are designing lessons with imagination and skill.

Notes to editors

Personal Finance Teacher of the Year – Competition Terms and Conditions.

The competition is open to all qualified teachers employed at a primary or secondary school in the United Kingdom (and Teaching Assistants employed at a UK school for the Teaching Assistant category), but nominations can be made by anyone who is resident in the UK (including parents, guardians, and pupils).

How to enter:

Nominations can be made by anyone (including parents, guardians, and pupils) who is resident in the UK.

To nominate a teacher or teaching assistant, parents, carers, or pupils should email teacher@ii.co.uk with the teacher’s name along with the name and address of the school, by 11 September 2023. We will then approach the teacher and ask them to submit their lesson plan and brief supporting statement (teachers will need to submit this by 29 September 2023).

Teachers and teaching assistants can also nominate themselves, by emailing teacher@ii.co.uk with a lesson plan and supporting statement by 29 September 2023.

Only one entry may be submitted by any person.

The prizes:

The following prizes will be awarded to schools:

Personal Finance Teacher of the Year (primary school)

Personal Finance Teacher of the Year (secondary school)

New category: Personal Finance Teaching Assistant 

Runner-up prizes, special Judges' Awards and Highly Commended prizes may be awarded at the judges' discretion. The full prize money will total £25,000 to be shared across winning schools.

Prize money will be awarded to the school.

interactive investor Services Limited reserves the right to alter, withdraw or amend this competition at any time.

Winner selection and notification:

The winners will be selected by a panel of judges selected by Interactive Investor Services Limited. Judging will be on the basis of the lesson plans and supporting statements supplied.

The winners will be notified by mail, email, telephone or in person as soon as reasonably practicable after the judges have made their decisions. The notification will include details of how the prize can be claimed.

In the event that a winner does not accept their prize, Interactive Investor Services Limited reserves the right to select an alternative winner.

Personal Details:

The winners consent to the use by Interactive Investor Services Limited of the winner's name, and school name and town/City, for the sole purposes of announcing the winners. By claiming the prizes, all winners consent to the same.

Winners consent to their photos, names and the name of their school being used by interactive investor. By claiming the prizes, all winners consent to the same.

Winners consent to their photos, names and the name of their school being used by other media unconnected with interactive investor. By claiming the prizes, all winners consent to the same.

By allowing their nominations to be considered by the judges, all participants agree to be bound by these terms and confirm that the decision of Interactive Investor Services Limited is binding.

The competition will be governed by English law and entrants to the competition submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

Promoter:

The competition is run by Interactive Investor Services Limited, 201 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 3NW.

These articles are provided for information purposes only.  Occasionally, an opinion about whether to buy or sell a specific investment may be provided by third parties.  The content is not intended to be a personal recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or product, or to adopt any investment strategy as it is not provided based on an assessment of your investing knowledge and experience, your financial situation or your investment objectives. The value of your investments, and the income derived from them, may go down as well as up. You may not get back all the money that you invest. The investments referred to in this article may not be suitable for all investors, and if in doubt, an investor should seek advice from a qualified investment adviser.

*Source: The Association of Investment Companies (AIC) using Research in Finance. The research among young people aged between 20 and 40 who do not currently invest was conducted via an online survey of 200 non-investors with an even split between 20-29 year olds and 30-39 year olds. The online survey was conducted between 13 October and 31 October 2022. The research also included in-depth interviews with six non-investors, which were conducted between 5 September and 14 September 2022.