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Home > Education and training > Educating adults

Educating adults

If you want to provide adults with financial literacy education or training, you will get some useful tips and sources on this page.

Community: Community based education options provide a welcoming and supportive environment where people can develop these important life management skills in a non-threatening environment. Community groups often targeted in community-based financial literacy programs include pre-retirees, retirees, parents, Indigenous people, and migrant groups.

Employees: Increasingly, employers are thinking about and offering their employees financial literacy training. Employers can benefit from improved productivity and motivation, and employees accrue many benefits from greater personal control of their finances.

Find out how at the Workplace pages.

Employers that have run financial literacy programs for their workers report:

  • improved motivation and productivity
  • improved understanding of individual financial issues and options
  • improved understanding of the financial imperatives of their company
  • a greater appreciation of the benefits provided by the employer as part of the employment relationship.

Apprentices and trainees: Financial literacy is very important for apprentices and trainees, because they are entering the workforce for the first time, and encountering a number of money management issues. Apprentices may also end up managing their own books as they become small business owners and contractors. Registered Training Organisations can include financial literacy in nationally accredited qualifications, depending on the packaging rules of the qualifications. They can do this by using the nationally endorsed financial literacy competency standards, as the ACT Master Builders Association has done.

Financial literacy competency standards are available through the National Training Information Service's website at www.ntis.gov.au or from Innovation and Business Skills Australia at www.ibsa.org.au.

Next steps:

  • Visit Education materials to see if there are materials listed there that will help you deliver the education and training you want to your students.
  • Visit the News and case studies page to get some ideas about how others have delivered financial literacy.
  • Visit the network page and join our Educators and Trainers Network so you can get the latest news and contribute to the development of ideas and practice around financial literacy.
  • If you're developing your own program, visit the Education materials developers page for advice on the Financial Literacy Foundation's quality process, Essential Elements, and further information on the competency standards, and adult learning.

Research and papers on adult financial literacy:

ANZ Bank, 2005, ANZ Survey of Adult Financial Literacy in Australia,

Commonwealth Bank, 2005, Improving financial literacy in Australia benefits for the individual and the nation

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2005, Improving Financial Literacy; Analysis of Issues and Policies, OECD, Paris