The new project will be directed at young people and teachers. The objective is to help educators to incorporate financial matters in their classes, and evaluate students on these topics.
“We plan to launch in the coming weeks a new major exercise to extend Dolceta to primary and secondary education”, said an official of the European Commission speaking at a conference on consumer information and education organized on 16 April in Brussels, by the World Savings Banks Institute (WSBI) and the European Savings Banks Group (ESBG), two of the largest international banking associations.
Up till now, Dolceta has focused on adult education. The new project aims to improve the service offered by the website in order to make it useful also to young people. In fact financial interests change with the age. An adult tends to be more interested in how to invest or save money. Whereas a young person usually needs information on how to use a bank account or a payment card.
The new project is planned to run for two years. It will complement the Europa Diary project, under which, in 2007, the Commission distributed to 18,000 European schools more than two million copies of an education kit to help teachers explain the basis of finance to their students.
Commission initiatives cannot go further at the moment due to the provisions of the Treaties, which leave educational competencies to Member States.
