S3 Personal Financial Literacy

Course Overview 

The Level 4 Personal Finance course develops basic life management skills as it equips pupils with the skills to cope confidently and effectively with basic financial encounters as well as managing money. 

In the Principles of Money unit pupils will identify money and different forms of income, describe ways to store and access money and create and use a budget. Pupils will then describe how to open a bank account and will gain a deeper knowledge of foreign exchange. 

In the Money Management unit classes will learn the Principles of Money, the different costs you incur in adult life and pupils will calculate bills. Pupils will then look at different forms of borrowing, insurance and long term financial planning. Furthermore, this unit looks at buying and spending.

Learning and Teaching Approaches

Personal Finance lessons are varied and will include a mixture of online, written and group work. A profile will be kept of your performance in class work, homework and assessments. This will let you keep a record of the areas you are doing well in, as well as setting yourself targets to help you improve as you work through the course. 

Homework

You will receive homework on a regular basis. It may consist of completing an exercise started in class, completing a homework sheet or revising for an assessment. 

Assessment Approaches

Assessment will take place both formally and informally throughout the course. The course has been designed for on-line testing via SOLAR which is SQA’s “platform for formative and summative assessment”. The assessments are generated from an item bank which means in practice that every learner gets their own unique assessment every time it is attempted. Assessments consist of the following types of questions: Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Matching, Gap fill, Drag and Drop and Re-order. 

Progression

This course familiarises pupils with some of the experiences and outcomes of National 4/5 Business Education subjects and Mathematics.