Understanding overdrafts, credit cards and credit scores

This lesson contains content from a lesson previously titled Financial survival skills.

The suite of LifeSkills money skills content has recently been updated. Responding to insights from teaching professionals and the benefits of building key topics over time we’ve made changes enabling clearer sequencing through the content. This will support your students to deepen their knowledge as they progress through education and help embed skills to support with financial independence.

To see an overview of the updates and where key topics can be found please visit Money Skills resource updates. The wider suite of Money Skills content has been developed to engage your pupils with a mix of resource types including interactive tools and films, aligns to the Young Money Financial Education Planning Framework and has been awarded the Young Money Quality Mark.

The Understanding overdrafts, credit cards and credit scores lesson focuses on the use of credit cards, understanding what a credit score is, identifying different types of borrowing and how to apply different debt strategies to a range of financial emergencies.

Resources

• Understanding overdrafts, credit cards and credit scores: Lesson plan - for use with a group of students in the classroom.
• Understanding overdrafts, credit cards and credit scores: Presentation slides - to display to students and use alongside the lesson plan.

Lesson learning outcomes

By the end of the lesson students will be able to:

• Discuss current accounts and the use of credit cards.
• Identify different forms of borrowing and how to apply different debt strategies to a range of financial emergencies.
• Understand the difference between being in debt and in financial difficulty.
• Identify what a credit score and top tips for looking after it.

Why not include financial capability as a focus in your students’ wider curriculum? Refer to our Content guide to find out how LifeSkills resources can be used in PSHE or Maths lessons.

If you want to increase your own confidence to teach young people about money, Young Money provide free e-learning training to teachers across Primary and Secondary education. In addition, National Numeracy has a free website which helps you practise and refresh your everyday maths skills.