| “Although participants were reasonably confident about key aspects of financial capability, as might be expected, they expressed levels of confusion and a pervasive sense of powerlessness when it came to wider economic questions.” “All participants were aware of the current economic crisis, but felt overwhelmed and confused by the different and contradictory views expressed in the media on the causes and the route recovery, so much that many were tempted to dismiss all of it.” “In the course of the discussion a degree of understanding emerged about the difficulty of the task facing politicians.” “…only a minority said that knowing more about the way parties approached the deficit would affect how they voted.” Recommendations: “Even where such programmes (i.e. economic awareness within Citizenship in the school curriculum) do exist, it is noteworthy that the ‘economic’ aspects focus more or less exclusively on students as future employees and consumers.” “Yet despite a clear mandate for economic awareness within citizenship this strand can often be overlooked in favour of the more ‘traditional’ elements relating to human rights and parliamentary democracy.” “Reticence in covering the economic strands of the citizenship curriculum is largely due to teachers lacking ‘specialist knowledge’ or ‘confidence’ in addressing the economic elements.” “…economic literacy needs to be seen as a crucial subset of a wider civic literacy.” “But the agenda can’t be limited to the classroom or young people. It requires the proliferation of spaces in which citizens and their representatives can understand, scrutinise and contest the use of economic expertise in decision-making.” “We do not argue that the experts should be cast out of these discussions. Their contributions are valuable, but they should be open to challenge.” | 