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India's school curriculum is set to get a serious make-over with the inclusion of financial education.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the SEBI-led National Institute of Securities Market (NISM) have embarked on developing course material on financial education for high-school students.
Mr. K. Sukumaran, Dean of School for Investor Education and Financial Literacy, NISM, said, “It is still at a nascent stage. The talks with the stakeholders, such as the Finance Ministry, Human Resource Development Ministry and others, started in August last year.”
Mr Sukumaran added that the capital market regulator is taking the lead in co-ordinating with other regulators, such as the Reserve Bank of India, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority and others.
“The biggest challenge is that the school syllabus has so many different subjects. We are trying to examine if financial education can be embedded into the existing school curriculum. If you are looking at comprehensive financial literacy then we need separate text-books,” Mr Sukumaran added.
NISM has started designing the course modules for school, which would include topics such as savings, investments, banking, financial planning and other subjects.
The subject is likely to be introduced in schools over the next one to two years, he said, adding that once the resource material is ready and NISM will also train school teachers.
Meanwhile, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has agreed to incorporate financial education as part of school syllabus and it has appointed a committee in this regard.
SEBI officials said that they would like to make it a part of the regular school curriculum, making it necessary for every student to study the subject.
“Last year we had 3,000 programmes for various target groups, including school students,” he added.
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