Old Mutual has partnered with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) to commence the development of a financial literacy online orientation course for junior and senior secondary teachers.
The course is designed to equip teachers with the capacity to effectively implement the financial literacy concepts that are to be mainstreamed into the curriculum during the learning process.
Set to be rolled out for piloting in February 2023, developing the financial literacy training course entails writing/scripting, editing, designing, developing multimedia elements, piloting, monitoring, and training on the agreed platforms.
Its development comes six months after the two institutions completed the development of the financial literacy guidelines, which outlined how financial literacy is contextualized and conceptualized from a curriculum perspective. This step was preceded by an analysis of integrations matrices, an in-depth analysis of existing financial literacy integration to identify gaps.
The course will be rolled out under Old Mutual’s program Learn. Think. Do – which is part of the organization’s strategy to reach over 30 million people across Africa to acquire financial literacy skills that will enable them to achieve their financial goals. Through the initiative, Old Mutual has invested Kshs 21 million to support KICD and other partners in developing the financial literacy mainstreaming matrices, the online orientation course for teachers, and guidelines for education sector partners.
Arthur Oginga, Old Mutual Group CEO, had this to say, “At Old Mutual, part of our responsible business ethos is to integrate skills development and financial literacy in the work that we do to support the communities where we operate in. This initiative is right at the heart of our objective to enable Kenyans to acquire the necessary financial skills to become economically active, meet their financial goals and drive the development goals of our country.”
KICD Chief Executive Officer, Prof Charles Ong’ondo, said, “As KICD, our interest is to ensure that every learner who goes through the Competency-Based Curriculum can demonstrate an awareness of resource mobilization, specifically financial mobilization, and prudent expenditure of that resource. We believe this will lead to sound, prudent, and financial management among our learners and will also trickle to households and communities and birth a country that has reduced debt at the individual level, community, corporate and the national level”.
Once complete, the course will be rolled out to at least 100 teachers for a pilot phase in 5 counties. Physical monitoring of pilot will be conducted to offer teachers professional support. This aims to identify gaps, make the necessary changes, and later roll out across the country to all teachers for national implementation.
Among the key areas covered in the course include self-exploration skills that unpack self-awareness, personal values, problem solving, critical thinking and decision making skills and talents and abilities, resources that unpack the ability to analyze financial resources, entrepreneurial skills that unpack activities that one can do to generate more revenue and financial skills which cover revenue and expenditure, financial services and debt management skills and ICT in financial transactions that unpack, mobile money transactions, online bank transactions and e-commerce among others.