Pupils from St. Paul’s High School celebrated success at the inaugural Ulster Bank Financial Capability Awards which took place on Wednesday 1st June in The Great Hall at Queens University, Belfast.

 Jill Smyth, Head of MoneySense at Ulster Bank, and one of the judges on the panel, was challenged by the standard of the applications: “We had a lot of tough choices to make as a result of the high standard of entries which clearly demonstrated the creativity, excellence and impact of financial education teaching that is happening in schools across Northern Ireland.

 “We want to discover and reward the best efforts made by schools, students and individual teachers in teaching financial capability. It is vital that young people learn how to understand and manage their finances at an early age. We hope that these awards will help to support financial capability teaching and the sharing of innovative practices across the educational community”.

The Ulster Bank, in association with CCEA, the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessments, recognise the growing importance of financial capability teaching in helping young people understand the world of finance.  Outstanding examples of personal financial education takes place in secondary schools across Northern Ireland and Ulster Bank has a long standing commitment to financial education through its flagship Money Sense for Schools programme, the largest financial education programme for post-primary schools in Ireland.

Jill continues: “Ensuring young people are equipped with the knowledge and skills to make good financial choices and deal with the challenges of becoming independent adults is so important and we set up these awards to showcase and reward the schools, students and teachers who are bringing these lessons to life.”

Richard Hanna of CCEA says: “Being able to understand and manage money is a crucial skill, no matter what job you end up doing and we are delighted to be supporting these awards which recognise the vital role that schools are playing in laying the foundations pupils need to effectively begin managing their own finances.”