Banqer

Melbourne, Australia + 2 more

Banqer is an online tool that enables teachers to simulate financial experiences for students to get hands on managing personal finances

Banqer is a free online financial literacy tool that transforms the classroom (Year 2-8) into a virtual economy where students get to experience managing personal finances first-hand. Each student has their own online account and with the click of a few buttons, teachers can simulate everyday financial experiences such as: earning income, paying expenses and tax, and credit/debt.

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HundrED 2019

Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

HundrED 2019

Web presence

2015

Established

-

Children

2

Countries

Updated

February 2018

Banqer has helped our teaching units to come alive with authentic and easy to use modules that give the students sound financial literacy moving into the next phase of their lives. Students had heard some of these concepts from their parents but being able to engage with them safely in a simulated environment really challenged them with some real world, complex decisions similar to those we have to make as adults.

About the innovation

Bringing financial education to life in the classroom

Banqer is a financial literacy tool designed to make financial education easy for teachers to deliver, as well as making it engaging and relevant for students.

It is an experiential learning tool that enables teachers to transform their classroom into a virtual economy for students to earn, spend, save, trade and invest. Through interacting with the platform, students learn important financial concepts and develop money management skills.

Teachers are supported with downloadable teaching resources on the financial concepts which include lesson plans, exercises and activities, and links to the Australian curriculum. Importantly, we appreciate teachers are super busy so Banqer is simple to set up and easy to manage. Moreover, it is made to be engaging for students.

Impact & scalability

Media

Our 1,000th classroom road trip 🚙🇳🇿🚗

Kiwi Kids Getting Money Savvy

Can you Destroy the Debt? (Interactive Video)

Implementation steps

Get Started Now

Banqer is free to schools, so to secure a sponsored account, simply go onto the website and click the 'Get Started Now' button.

You will be prompted to set up your class, this process takes less than ten minutes.

The system will generate usernames and passwords for each of your students which you can print off and hand out for them to log on to their account.

They will be prompted to sit a 'Kick-off Quiz' to assess their capability. This enables us to measure their progress.

Set up your classroom economy

Teachers will be guided through an orientation designed to show them how best to establish their classroom economy.

They will also be offered a personal webinar with Liz.

With the click of a few buttons, teachers will set up their students with a weekly basic income (in exchange for their attendance and participation), establish a list of weekly classroom expenses that the students will set up automatic payments for, and enable the 'Interest on Savings' module to encourage students to make regular contributions to their savings account.

Once the basic economy is established, Banqer can run in the background of the classroom with students logging on in their own time to observe the flow of money into and out of their everyday account and the growth in their savings.

Enable the modules in your own time

When your class have a handle on the basics you can start enabling the various modules.

Each module introduces students to the financial concept by allowing them to interact with it, ie. select their superannuation fund, write a CV and apply for a job. Teachers are supported with teaching resources - lesson plans/activities/exercises that have been tried and tested in the classroom of Banqer co-founder and educator, Micah Hoquard.

This two pronged approach - experiential and theoretical - encourages deep, comprehensive learning on the financial concepts and helps to develop vital life skills.