Czech secondary school students showed best financial skills in Europe

Prague – The Citi Foundation and the international non-profit educational organization Junior Achievement carried out independent research, in which 2,943 secondary school students from 12 European countries participated. The aim of the research was to test young people’s understanding of basic financial principles and concepts and to assess the educational impact of Junior Achievement programs, whose purpose is to provide financial education and practical training in economic principles.The results of the research have shown that financial education and training in financial skills, which are the very objective of Junior Achievement programs, strongly influence financial literacy of secondary school students. 79% of respondents gave correct answers to all research questions, while 70.5% of them were aware of the importance of the acquired knowledge and skills when perfecting their abilities for their future career.“After evaluating the results, Czech students won a notable victory in the number of correctly answered questions, beating Bulgaria and Great Britain,” says Josef Müller, Executive Director of Junior Achievement. The research has also shown better results for European respondents with 62.8% of correct answers compared to the 48.3% scored by their U.S. counterparts.Due to a large number of participating students, the Czech Republic also ranked among the seven states with the largest number of respondents. It also scored a victory in the number of female respondents, who accounted for the total of 71% in the Czech Republic.“All projects that the Citi Foundation supports in the Czech Republic focus on raising the level of financial literacy. We believe that financial literacy and access to financial resources are a positive driving force. As we started to strongly promote this issue in the Czech Republic already at the time when it was far from being seen as a priority and, on the contrary, rather neglected both by the Czech public and media, we consider ourselves pioneers in this field . We’ve worked in partnership with Junior Achievement in the Czech Republic for over 13 years and the research prove that our cooperation has brought the desired results,” said Branislav Cehlárik, Public Affairs Officer for Czech and Slovak Republics. The research results show that 74.5% of students participating in the Junior Achievement programs were able to understand the basics of financial management and had the basic skills in financial issues. The students have also proven their understanding to pricing methods in a free market environment (73.6%) and awareness of the fact that shopping habits are most significantly influenced by inflation (58.3%)In the end, Czech students expressed their satisfaction with Junior Achievement programs when the total of 68% respondents answered “yes” to the question whether they would recommend such program to a friend.