Sharma attends Barclays Money Skills event at Southcote Primary School

On Tuesday 17th January, Alok Sharma, MP for Reading West, joined pupils at Southcote Primary School for a workshop which engaged students at the school in a session centred on money skills. The event, which was a joint venture between Barclays in Berkshire and Reading Football Club, also featured a discussion examining the issues of bullying and racism.

As part of the event, Southcote Primary School joined forces with Barclays employees from Reading and Gary Webb and Daniel McLeod-Walker both from Reading Football Club’s Community Trust, with the aim of raising financial understanding amongst young people and also addressing the issues of bullying and racism.

The workshop on money skills was led by Barclays branch staff as part of Barclays national Barclays Money Skills programme, which is an initiative, funded by Barclays, to provide free financial capability training to people across the UK. The session aimed to engage the young people at the school and offered Barclays employees the opportunity to volunteer and share their business knowledge with the students, helping them to come to grips with the importance of understanding and managing money in a practical and fun way.

Alok said: “I was very happy to join the students as they took part in this financial skills course. Being financially literate from a young age is incredibly important and I was impressed by the answers many of the students gave to exercises on the course. They clearly have a grasp of financial skills and many understood business concepts such as making a profit or a loss. I think the importance of financial education is going to increasing and it is good to see organisations such as Barclays taking a role in helping schools to deliver some of these life skills.”

Victoria Pullen from Barclays Reading, who organised the event, said: “Barclays Money Skills is all about improving the financial capability of young people across the UK. In addition to providing funding to charities working with young people to help them increase their money skills, we aim to make a real impact by encouraging our staff to volunteer using their professional skills through this programme.”

The Barclays Money Skills website (www.barclaysmoneyskills.com) has a Resource Centre which allows anyone to download free of charge useful money management information and exercises for young people.

Photo: Alok and Andrea Upton (Barclays), Carly Young (Southcote Primary School) and Jonathan Lee (Barclays) with Southcote Primary School students