Dollarmites and banking in schools

Some interesting comments about banking in schools:

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The New Daily also ran an article on the call to remove Dollarmites from Schools:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/consumer/2019/09/30/dollarmites-commbank-criticism

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Hi everyone,

I’m a mobilisation campaigner here at CHOICE. It’s lovely to meet you all :slight_smile:

Submissions close this Thursday (31 October) for ASIC’s school banking scheme review. Have you written your submission yet? If not, hop to it! Here’s the link.

There are tips on the page to make your submission have the most impact.

If you’ve already made a submission, thank you! Know anyone else who might be interested? Send them this way: https://choice.com.au/dollarmites

Thank you!

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Just sent mine through using the link…the Choice webpages are very simple to use and follow…

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Sent mine in the other day, with an anecdote about the banking rep burping and making a joke about the freshness of the bacon at the motel he stayed at - that is the main thing I remember of the presentation, back in the mid 1970s! I got a rectangular metal box, but it only ever accumulated a few dollars, as did my CBA bank account, before I went elsewhere.
I don’t remember it being called Dollarmites back then… not sure it even had a name.

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Thank you. It’s a great project.

I’ve offered my support to end the rort.

School banking fails to deliver in so many ways. Most fundamentally in not effectively teaching how to set and achieve goals that are reinforced through tangible rewards the average school child can relate to.

That the real world offers in comparison freedom of choice and a range of digital access options is the final slime in the school banking cesspool.

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Just a note on teaching kids about compound interest…
I remember doing a whole unit on simple and compound interest in year 9 maths. I scored an A+. This wasn’t very long ago either - so it is being taught.
I have a great understanding about interest… but I’ve still been caught out by credit cards :frowning: understanding how it works in theory doesn’t seem to help when it comes to practice.

Ironically, I had a Dollarmites account with school banking in the mid 90s… and I am still in thrall to the CBA to this day after they reeled me in closer in my early adulthood, although thankfully only to a small degree!

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Yes indeed. There are many things that determine who will get their cash chewed up by interest charges not just understanding the sums. However if you don’t understand the practical consequences, such as a small change in compound interest rates can over time make a substantial difference to the total you repay, then you are at a disadvantage.

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People often say it’s up to the consumer to do their research, but at the end of the day my answer is always the same: Banks spend millions of dollars every year paying experts in the field to maximise the profits from consumers. No regular consumer is ever going to be able to overcome that disadvantage

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ASIC finds little evidence school banking works:

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We think there are better ways for kids to save and learn.

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The Victorian Governmnet is banning banking programs in schools.

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Why is everyone so against the Dollarmites system ? I am totally in favour of it staying in the schools as it teaches kids how to save which is very much absent in this day and age. There is too much “Buy Now, Pay Later” placing so many young ones way into to debt. It doesn’t matter what bank it is, kids can make their own decision when they reach 16 or 18 or what ever age and change banks as have all our kids over the years. It is all about teaching them to save. Doing it online means absolutely nothing to the kids.I agree it is upto parents to teach kids to save and this is a great way of doing it with the kids helping doing the banking at school which should be part of their education

.hi @JM010, welcome to the community.

The issue isn’t the provision of financial awareness in schools, but the tainting of the ‘education’ provided by a commercial operator, which encourages children to set up school banking through them. It is well known that children customers, more often than not, become adult customers.

Education should be independent and delivered by experts in their fields, and not delivered by a corporation who is there possibly to serve its own interests first.

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The understatement of the century?

Which bank?

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Even if we presume all students do the same (research says they don’t) it still is a marketing tool. The moment kids reach those ages they receive repeated marketing offers from the Commonwealth Bank because they have already handed over their most valuable asset: Their information.

Is it ok for education to be provided on the condition students hand over their information to a for-profit company for marketing? Most of us here think not

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… all banks.

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The school banking programs are not supported by teachers - the Australian Education Union has previously argued bank-run schemes have no place in schools and financial literacy education should be delivered by teachers. (It’s already part of the curriculum in both primary and secondary schools and could be expanded).

They’re not supported by consumer experts - Choice has conducted research finding 46 per cent of people opened their first account with Commonwealth Bank, and a third of people had stayed with their first bank.

Nor are they supported by the academic research cited by ASIC, which found children aged 5 to 13 could not understand the nuance enough to be informed consumers of a financial product, and that the association with the school gave the brand an unearned “trust halo”.

Caitlin Fitzsimmons hits the nail on the head here:

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It is a great article.

The other night while laying in bed listening to Rod Quinn on ABC in the wee hours of the morning, I wondered if the Dollarmites program was from a bygone era where the Commonwealth Bank was owned by the Commonwealth Government and the banking system was a very different beast. The banking system has moved on but the in-school banking systems have remained the same…and are now ‘old fashioned’ and out of step with current community expectations.

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