RedSTART Educate

This week it’s all about Edinburgh! Yesterday our CEO, Sarah Marks, and Regional Manager, Elaine Mclean, were at the parliament for a meeting with Ben Macpherson, MSP for Edinburgh North and Leith, where we are working in a number of member schools. An exciting meeting with a number of follow ups on both sides and a real alignment in views on the importance of education, including financial education, in tackling poverty. More to come on this in the coming weeks.

Yesterday our CEO, Sarah Marks, and our Regional Manager for North London, Katie Burles, were invited to attend the town hall of our newest partner, Russell Investments! We had a massively warm welcome with lots of people coming up to volunteer and support us, and lots of questions from people wanting to find out more about what we are doing and how they can help. We are so excited about this new partnership and looking forward to working with Hannah De Groot, Joanne George, David Rae, Jim Leggate and the team in the coming years. One of the main characters from the book Save Your Acorns (written by one of our founders, Robert Gardner) which we use in our Reception workshops, also came along and gave everything his seal of approval. Say hello to Oliver the squirrel!

In a week when the Financial Times published an article quoting research by Santander UK concluding that only 1 in 4 young adults (18 to 21 year olds) can recall receiving any financial education at school, we have been hearing from our primary Head Teachers across the country about the importance of this work and the difference they see it making in some of our most deprived communities. On Monday we heard from Jan, Head Teacher at Newcraighall primary school in Edinburgh, about the importance of children understanding their power as a consumer in a world where monetary transactions are increasingly online and invisible. Today we hear from Ruth, Head Teacher at St Paul’s Church of Wales primary school in Cardiff. Among other things, she talks about the importance of developing the knowledge of children living in families who are managing their finances day to day and ensuring these children also understand how money works and the consequences of their decisions, as they grow up. Over to you, Ruth!

Welcome to 2025 and the first of a series of short videos from some of our Head teachers around the country, explaining the challenges to delivering financial education in primary schools and how our resources and #ChangetheGame programme supports and helps them to embed it into school life. Over to you, Jan, from Newcraighall primary school in Edinburgh.

Fascinating research from one of our long term funding partners, OneFamily and published recently in FT Adviser. Great to see our CEO Sarah Marks quoted in the article, too. People often ask why we are teaching about money in primary school and not waiting until later in life. The truth is that learning about money should be a life long strategy as people’s needs and requirements change hugely through life, but it needs to start young. As the teenagers spoken to as part of this research have said, you need to embed good habits, confidence and understanding early on.

It’s been a week of celebration for us at RedSTART Educate and a fantastic end to the year, after an intense and impactful 2024. Our brilliant strategic funding partners, Manulife | CQS Investment Management put us up in their fabulous offices on Trafalgar Square, so we had the best view of the sun setting over Nelson’s column, the sparkly Christmas market and the slightly underwhelming tree. We were also treated to some wonderful breakfast pastries that fuelled a very productive day as we looked at planning and efficiency and how that supports our scaling objective in 2025. Huge thanks to Victoria Simmons and Soraya Chabarek who have been supporters of ours from the start of #ChangetheGame. We also had some fantastic news from Pension Insurance Corporation plc who agreed to renew our strategic funding partnership for another 3 years and from Schroders who have extended their strategic funding partnership with us into 2025. We are so grateful to both organisations and are looking forward to working with you to deliver on our strategy in the coming years. We wish all our wonderful volunteers, teachers, funders, supporters and the 28,000 children who are now part of the #ChangetheGame programme, a very merry Christmas and a peaceful and joy filled New Year. We would not be where we are without you! Thank you so much. Here we are at the CQS office, about to head off for our Christmas meal and farewell drinks for our Christina Lartey, who leaves us at the end of the month to set up her own business, and a photo of our CEO, Sarah Marks, with a yellow, 13 foot penguin, at the brand new offices of PIC.

Fascinating research from one of our long term funding partners, OneFamily and published recently in FT Adviser. Great to see our CEO Sarah Marks quoted in the article, too. People often ask why we are teaching about money in primary school and not waiting until later in life. The truth is that learning about money should be a life long strategy as people’s needs and requirements change hugely through life, but it needs to start young. As the teenagers spoken to as part of this research have said, you need to embed good habits, confidence and understanding early on.

Huge thanks to Incisive Media for choosing RedSTART as charity of the year at the Investment Company of the Year awards dinner last night. Congratulations to Francesca Harding and the whole team at Incisive Media for a fabulous event and thanks to The Association of Investment Companies (AIC) and Fidelity International for hosting the night! Our CEO, Sarah Marks, spoke at the event and met some hugely supportive people at the drinks, over dinner and after the event, including the on stage host for the night, Declan Curry, who gave us an extra shout out after the presentation. Congratulations to all the winners! Lovely to meet you all and hope to see some of you in schools with us this academic year.

So proud that our Cherakee Bradley was invited to participate in the Child Poverty Summit at the Beacon of Light Sunderland! A really diverse group of around 350 people, all connected by the desire to end child poverty in the North East. A core objective of North East Mayor, Kim McGuinness. Cherakee participated in a really engaging round table discussion examining the role that education has in preventing poverty, breaking poverty cycles in families and supporting social mobility. The group also discussed how having even a basic understanding of money helps people make informed choices and avoid unmanageable debt and the downward spiral that can create, with both physical and mental implications. Great work, Cherakee!! We can’t wait to hear more about what comes next. 👏🏻🤩👏🏻

Thank you to everyone who came to the “Financial Education Fit for the Future: The Case for Policy Change” event, at The Policy Institute at King's College London on Tuesday evening. It was amazing to have support from so many people, across so many different sectors. A great job done by Susannah Hume presenting the second year findings from the research being carried out in partnership with our #ChangetheGame primary schools, huge thanks to Sally Morgan who was our fabulous and effective Chair, and to Jonathan Slater, Ruston Smith MBA, FPMI, FCMI, FRSA and Bernice Warwick, Head Teacher at Beulah Junior school in Thornton Heath, for talking openly and with vigour about their different perspectives on the subject. Everyone contributed to what was a lively and engaging discussion that could have continued for a lot longer. Thanks also to Johnny Runge, George May and the rest of the team at King’s for all their hard work pulling the event together and for ensuring everything ran smoothly on the night. The livestream recording is now available here.You can start watching at about 8 minutes, as we were a little late starting!: https://lnkd.in/eW3xxxrZ