Sunak is right that our students need financial literacy – but that shouldn’t mean yet more maths | Simon Jenkins

Education should prepare young people for dealing not only with practical things such as insurance, pensions and taxes but also with tech and mental health

What is it about ex-ministers that they suddenly know how to run the country? Tony Blair hurls thunderbolts at his successor, Keir Starmer. His former colleague, Alan Milburn, is shocked that a million young people aged 16-24 are not in education, training or a job – one in seven of them with degrees: a rate double that in Ireland and three times that in the Netherlands. Meanwhile the former prime minister, Rishi Sunak, complains that pupils are never taught “financial literacy”. They are left unprepared for life outside the school gates.

Sunak is clearly right, though we might wonder what he did about it when he was in Downing Street. His proposed numeracy project aims to teach children how to handle money, a skill at which he sees Britons in the dark ages compared with Germany and elsewhere. His only obsession is to believe this requires mathematics taught to the age of 18.

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