Romanian children aged eight to ten will study financial education in school for the first time this year.

Around 11,000 children chose the new optional discipline of Financial Education, and will learn practical things about how to handle money, how to save money, and how the interest rate of a bank loan is calculated, among others.

The number of children who have opted to learn about finances amounts to 1 percent of all primary education students in Romania – a total of 870,000.

The optional module is an initiative of a counsellor from the Romanian Central Bank (BNR), Ligia Georgescu-Goloşoiu, who is also the author of three school books on this topic, which will be used in schools starting this year.

The author, who holds a PhD in economics, has said children need to be educated in finance because they are the future consumers of bank products and services as well as the sector's future managers and entrepreneurs.

The BNR, which finances the project, will buy Georgescu-Goloşoiu's books and then distribute them for free in schools. The optional course also includes a recommended trip to a bank.

The program's was triggered by, among other things, the high number of non-performing bank loans in Romania, including more than 730,000 people with overdue debts of some EUR 2.3 billion as of mid-2013.

Some of these non-performing loans could be attributed to a lack of financial education for those who took the loan in the first place, according to experts.

editor@romania-insider.com