Incorporating Financial Literacy into the Secondary School Accounting Curriculum: A New Zealand Perspective

This paper examines whether selected stakeholder groups believe accounting should continue to be taught asan elective subject in its current form at New Zealand secondary schools or whether incorporating a financialliteracy component would increase the subject’s relevance to students. A mixed method approach combiningqualitative and quantitative research methods was used. An electronically administered survey was used toobtain the responses of secondary school accounting teachers, while additional insight in the form of semistructuredinterviews was obtained from other stakeholders.Although respondents generally agreed that students benefited from accounting as an elective subject atsecondary school, all agreed that the development of financial literacy skills was important. Difficulties inintroducing a new core subject into an already overcrowded curriculum were acknowledged. However, thisdifficulty could be overcome by making modifications to the subject “Accounting”. As the most widespread,existing “finance” related subject, Accounting would be the most appropriate vehicle through which to teachfinancial literacy.