Financial literacy will become a core element of the New Zealand social sciences curriculum for Year 1-10 students from 2027. But what is being proposed presents a limited picture of the factors influencing people’s financial wellbeing.
The specifics of the curriculum have yet to be released. However, the government’s announcement emphasised a focus on individual responsibility. Young people will be taught what they need to live within their means and how to accumulate enough wealth for retirement.
When announcing the new curriculum, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson said:
We are all consumers, and financial literacy can set young Kiwis up to be savvy consumers – whether it’s knowing how to invest wisely, choose the best loan at a bank, or even identify a scam.
However ... focusing only on individual responsibility risks ignoring the economic systems – and inequities – that shape young people’s lives.
Inequality in New Zealand has risen significantly in the past three decades. And the richest New Zealanders pay less tax than in similar OECD countries.
Knowing how to manage household accounts is, undeniably, an important skill. But individual skills can’t necessarily overcome the hurdles within the broader economic and social context.
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The resources being used in the classroom also exclude any significant discussion of broader economic systems and policies. Much of what is currently available is created in partnership with banks and financial organisations such as ASB’s GetWise and BNZ’s SavY programmes. These focus on budgeting, saving, banking and paying off debt.
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Financial literacy will become a core element of the New Zealand social sciences curriculum for Year 1-10 students from 2027. But what is being proposed presents a limited picture of the factors influencing people’s financial wellbeing.
The specifics of the curriculum have yet to be released. However, the government’s announcement emphasised a focus on individual responsibility. Young people will be taught what they need to live within their means and how to accumulate enough wealth for retirement.
When announcing the new curriculum, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson said:
We are all consumers, and financial literacy can set young Kiwis up to be savvy consumers – whether it’s knowing how to invest wisely, choose the best loan at a bank, or even identify a scam.
However, as our research shows, focusing only on individual responsibility risks ignoring the economic systems – and inequities – that shape young people’s lives.
Inequality in New Zealand has risen significantly in the past three decades. And the richest New Zealanders pay less tax than in similar OECD countries.
Knowing how to manage household accounts is, undeniably, an important skill. But individual skills can’t necessarily overcome the hurdles within the broader economic and social context.
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Focus on managing money
Financial literacy – under the term “financial capability” – is only briefly mentioned in the current New Zealand curriculum. The topic is positioned as a potential outcome of learning across different subject areas, rather than taught as its own distinct class.
Classroom resources focus on individual actions. Students are taught to manage money, set goals and manage risks.
There is no real discussion of economic inequality in the curriculum. And even the few references there are have a strong focus on personal responsibility.
Teaching resources available for senior economics, for example, explore topics such as income, taxation, product costs and the scarcity of resources.
In senior business studies, references to economic inequality are indirect. For example, the “key concepts” page alludes to ideas such as “supply and demand” and “scarcity” that can loosely be associated with economic inequality. But it is not explicit.
The resources being used in the classroom also exclude any significant discussion of broader economic systems and policies. Much of what is currently available is created in partnership with banks and financial organisations such as ASB’s GetWise and BNZ’s SavY programmes. These focus on budgeting, saving, banking and paying off debt.
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Globally, there has been a growing emphasis on financial literacy education, partly because of the complexity of modern financial products. And, as one study observed, “the risks of, and responsibility for, financial decisions are being increasingly shifted from governments and employers onto individuals”.
As political economist Chris Clarke has noted, there is an “irreconcilable gap” between the aims of financial literacy education and people’s “actual success in securing their security and wellbeing through financial markets”.
Other economists have pointed out how issues of intergenerational wealth and entrenched socioeconomic disadvantage – the “racial wealth gap” – cannot be overlooked when talking about “poor financial choices and decision making”.
But another form of financial literacy education is possible. Young people could be taught to understand and analyse how governments make decisions for the financial wellbeing of their citizens. They could also learn the value of employment rights, labour and workplace safety laws, and the role of unions and other civic initiatives.
Rather than focusing on taxes and balancing household accounts, students could learn about their individual responsibilities within the economic systems they are part of.
I have to respectfully disagree with that view.
First of all, the EU is a net exporter of electric cars. In 2024, the bloc exported 830,000 electric vehicles (+9 per cent year-on-year), while imports were at about 680,000 electric cars.
While imports from China remained steady in 2024 at more than 400 000 electric cars (60% of EU imports), the share of Chinese OEMs in imports from China grew to two-thirds in 2024, up from 50% in the previous year. The Chinese OEM Geely accounted for almost 40% of these imports, mainly through its brand Volvo Cars, according to statistics by the IEA.
Within the EU, sales of EVs by Chinese brands count for a small fraction of the total sales volume, with China’s BYD having sold ~7,000 in April 2025, for example (no 10 in the bloc), while market leader VW counts for ~200,000. If the EU would bloc Chinese EV imports, for example, it would hurt China extensively (supposedly more than the EU) as the Chinese economy could not sell its massive (and intentionally created) overcapacity. The EU doesn't need Chinese EVs, but China needs the EU (and other foreign markets) if it wants to maintains its business model.
More importantly, however, there are very strong mutual dependencies between China and the West that have the potential to result in high economic costs for both sides in the event of a geopolitical conflict, may it be caused by Beijing’s ongoing support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, a possible Chinese attack against Taiwan, or other events.
The Western share of Chinese imports is certainly at very high levels for many very important key products such as semiconductors and some machinery.
But the West also accounts for a high share of China's imports of other important goods, such as some foodstuffs, certain raw materials, and also some luxury products like perfume. If we look at China’s import/export ratios, we see it is 65:1 for ores, slag, and ash, and with an import share of almost 50 per cent the West holds a high leverage in this sector.
Chinese import/export ratios for mineral fuels is 8:1 (although the Western share is below 20 per cent here as the majority comes form emerging economies), for meat it is 36:1, for grain 21:1.
China is almost unilaterally dependent on aircraft and spacecraft machinery and parts thereof. Although the import/export ratio is quite low (2:1), the western share of Chinese imports is some 97 percent, according to the German Economic Institute (opens pdf – German source). This category displays China’s highest import dependency on the West, and there is practically no substitution by alternative trading partners and there appears to be only a small degree of substitutability possible through an expansion of domestic production.
[If interested, EU-China and other trade data with relevant links can be found here and using the Trading Economics data posted by @[email protected] in this thread – and many other data bases, but make sure you look at the customs data, not China’s official statistics or something.]
So I don’t say that the EU or the West doesn’t depend on China, but I say that China depends also on the West if we look at the data of hilghly complex global supply chains. There are strong mutual dependencies.