Danesfield School Bank / Shop
'Dane coins' in Marlow
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Danesfield Primary School in Marlow has developed an innovative approach to helping primary school children understand the basic concepts of financial management.
All children have a 'contactless' credit card with which they can access their school bank account and use it to buy products and services created within the school community.
The outcomes are remarkable, with conversations using appropriate financial vocabulary and concepts becoming a part of the routine life of the school as well as cross-curricular relevance across the age ranges.
DSB 1 Introduction to the Danesfield School Bank?
DSB 1 Introduction to the Danesfield School Bank?
'We created a school bank because we were really aware that children are used to growing up in a society where a lot of things that they order come the next day and they don't really have any financial understanding of how much that item has cost or they're not actually having to part with any pocket money'
Sarah Dawkins
Headteacher - Danesfield Primary School
DSB 4 Why did you develop the School Bank idea?
DSB 4 Why did you develop the School Bank idea?
'I haven't spent any of my Dane coins yet because I want to save up for something (like a mufti day with my friends) because I don't want to spend them all at once; and then maybe there's something in the future that might pop up and I want that, but I won't have anything left.'
Year 6 Pupils
Danesfield Primary School
DSB 2 How did you develop the idea?
DSB 2 How did you develop the idea?
'What we wanted to create was a really simple system that we could have complete control of as a school, which didn't involve any actual money changing hands. We used our parent partnership to work together to help us identify how we could actually make this happen'
Sarah Dawkins
Headteacher - Danesfield Primary School
DSB 5 Parents' view
DSB 5 Parents' view
'We also created the bank for the parents as well. We wanted to encourage the children to be talking to their parents about the things that they've been buying at school, or maybe they've been saving, and be having those financial conversations from a very young age.'
Sarah Dawkins
Headteacher - Danesfield Primary School
DSB 7 What can you buy?
DSB 7 What can you buy?
'The children have their bank cards within their classrooms and their bank cards have their own individual number on them. If the children lose their bank card, it takes them a week for it to be replaced. On a Friday, everybody checks their balances and that's when we have those kind of deeper conversations about what their financial decisions that week have been'
Sarah Dawkins
Headteacher - Danesfield Primary School
DSB 8 How do you manage the value of the currency you have created?
DSB 8 How do you manage the value of the currency you have created?
'We wanted to make sure that the bank was reflecting what was happening in the real world. So the bank sent everybody in the school a letter, a few weeks before the end of last half term, saying that unfortunately their interest rate was being lowered to one Dane coin for every ten at the end of each half term ... we phrased it in a way that a bank would.
I read it out to my class and they were not happy but we try to reflect what is happening in the financial market and frame it in a way that they will become more familiar with as they get bank accounts when they're older.'
Hannah Crosby
Year 4 teacher - Danesfield Primary School
DSB 9 What advice would you give to teachers considering starting their own School Bank?
DSB 9 What advice would you give to teachers considering starting their own School Bank?
'It has encouraged conversations that I would never dream of children of such a young age would have. And it's made us all reflect on our own financial decisions as well as staff. I think the one piece of advice is to keep it simple. Create a system that you know can stand the test of time. '
Sarah Dawkins
Headteacher - Danesfield Primary School
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