Math for Financial Future

  Interview with Miss Kate Rawson Kate kindly gave up her time to answer a few questions about the use of interest/compund interest in the school environment and daily-life, and how she engages students with the content. ·        What is your job title? High school Maths and English teacher. I mostly teach in the middle school with year 7-8 but also have year 10 maths. ·        What is your degree and when did you graduate? I have a Bachelor of Education (Middle & Secondary)/Bachelor of Arts and graduated in 2014 from Flinders University in Adelaide. ·        Other than teaching maths content, do you use maths in your job? I suppose the main reason I would use maths is for calculating grades. I use statistics and graphing for mapping student results which shows me their progress and averages. But most of the maths I use is within my teaching of it. I obviously teach all areas w...

  A key skill I would have loved to have learnt while I was in high school was understanding interest rates and the difference between simple and compound interest. Particularly simple interest in relation to loans, but being able to compare simple and compund interest for savings gains. The calculations for simple and compounding interest are very different and result in very different monetary outcomes as shown in the graph below. Learning key differences, I think would have helped me learn how to save/invest money for the biggest gains earlier in my life. (CFI Team, 2022) Compound Interest: This is a type of interest which changes (not fixed). It uses the principal amount and the pervious interest to calculate the new interest. They often call this ‘interest on interest’. Therefore, as interest gets added to the total principal, the new interest is calculated based on this larger number which in turn, increases the interest for the next period.   The formula f...

  Reading articles and reports that are thirty years or older is very interesting when it discusses the curriculum and student needs during that time. A report by the National Research Council, Board on Mathematical Sciences and Their Applications, and Mathematical Sciences Education Board (1989) discussed how ‘traditional’ mathematics was expected to include algebra and introductions to calculus for the purpose of preparing students to be successful in university. However they found many students of the time were under prepared for the jobs available after school with those skills they had learnt. They felt students were definitely not prepared for jobs of the future and made the point that mathematics is no longer just a calculating and scientific skill, but contributes to all aspects of daily life including health and business. These themes were extensively reviewed by Davis (2010) who specifically looked at how financially literate students were upon graduating high school. U...

When I reflect on when I was in high school completing mathematics before the Australian Curriculum was established, I was always frustrated that we would be learning statistics and calculus which I knew I was not going to use in my future profession (physiotherapy). My friends and I always said how we wanted to learn ‘useful mathematics’, which we thought meant to be able to save money to buy a house and complete taxes for when we work. I felt we had very little financial based mathematics in class and consequently, I believe I still have quite low financial literacy. My husband talks about investing money, stocks and shares, but I barely know how to get involved in this and how to control it. When I bought my house I needed large amounts of help from my parents, the banks and friends who had been through the process before. I feel I never had access/knew how to access programs to increase financial literacy and always thought it was something important that should be used at school...