Children will soon be teaching their parents how buy financial products, resist tempting credit cards and sort out household budgets.

That’s the view of the future if all schools take up recommendations of the Personal Finance Education Group (PFEG) released at a conference yesterday.

PFEG carried out a four-year trial project in personal finance education called Excellence and Access involving 150,000 pupils and 1,000 teachers. An independent evaluation of the project by Brunel University gave the project full marks and concluded Excellence and Access was the pupils’ best chance of improving their financial awareness.

Arguing for a national roll-out of the scheme, Professor Linda Thomas, of Brunel University, said: “At 18 years of age, young people need to be able to resist seemingly tempting credit card offers and be able to buy the kinds of financial products – mortgages, insurance, pensions - and take the kinds of risks, that suit them.”

“PFEG’s mission is to help everyone to be confident and competent in their dealings with the financial world. Its success must be continued.”

The Personal Finance Education Group (PFEG) wants finance lessons in all secondary schools, but said new funding was needed to extend the scheme. Up until now the scheme has been funded by the AITC, Barclays, HSBC and Prudential banks.

Charles Clarke MP, commented: “Personal finance education has an important role to play in helping break the cycle of financial exclusion and in enabling children to become more self sufficient.”

“The Personal Finance education Group has successfully shown what can be done to engage teachers’ skills and imaginations on making this important topic integral to schools’ curriculum. However, there is much more to be done to ensure that every child leaves school with personal finance skills.”

The children in the trials received personal finance education on subjects as diverse as budgeting and starting a small business.

More than 80% of the teachers surveyed in the evaluation of the project agreed that personal finance education had improved in the light of the project.