WHY DOES GLOBAL THINKING FOUNDATION TAKE PART TO THE OECD MEETINGS?

Global Thinking Foundation regularly participates to the meetings organised by the OECD together with its departments. For the Foundation, this participation constitutes an essential moment of exchange and follow-up with regards to the trends, analysis and suggested guidelines, especially those falling within the Foundation’s mission. The extensive presence of CSOs (Civil Society Organisations) also encourages the fruitful sharing of good practices as well as a critical comparison of local problems and needs, thus enabling us to increase the food for thought and improve the formulation of projects carried out in Italy.

FINANCIAL EDUCATION
International Network for Financial Education

As the only Italian non-profit ETS Foundation marked by the Affiliate Member status, Global Thinking Foundation participates to the International Network for Financial Education – INFE.

Created in 2008, the OECD/INFE brings together 260 public institutions from over 120 countries, as well as civil society actors and private sector representatives, in order to address issues related to financial education, from the collection of comparable data to the development of methodologies for measuring the impact of programmes; from the definition of tools for the benefit of policy makers, to the sharing of good practices.

As emerged from the conference “Resolution on Financial Literacy in Italy” (18.01.2021), financial literacy levels in Italy are still low, especially compared to other OECD countries. It is therefore necessary to give importance to measures that focus especially on young people and gender equality in order to close the knowledge gap.

 

 

Social initiatives have shown us the power of schools that turn young people into financial champions. It is therefore necessary to introduce new projects and initiatives that enable us to achieve greater equity and introduce ESG – Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance – based discussions. For this very reason, GLT drew on the OECD’s guidelines on financial literacy to introduce the following projects:

 

With the aim of encouraging conversations on gender equality for greater social development, the OECD also introduced a Gender Portal:
a milestone towards gender language in publications.

 

 

In support of gender issues, and with the intention of emphasising the importance of financial education as a method of preventing economic violence,
GLT continues with the Free to… LIVE exhibition

 

 

 

PISA is the OECD’s programme for the international assessment of students, measuring the ability of 15-year-olds
to use their knowledge and skills in reading, mathematics and science to tackle real-life challenges.

 

INFE/OCSE Financial Education in Italy, 2021

18/01/2021 RESOLUTION ON FINANCIAL LITERACY IN ITALY
Thematic notes of the interventions:

> Pier Paolo Beretta – Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy and Finance

• Levels of financial literacy in Italy is still low, especially compared to other OECD countries
• Difference in levels including gender
• Measures on youth and gender equality should be kept in mind
• Adequate levels of financial knowledge are necessary for social and economic development
• Direct correlation between financial knowledge and resilience
• COVID emergency puts us to the test – we are all more exposed to the consequences, especially the economic and financial ones
• COVID has had a very strong impact on Italian poverty
  º 105% increase in new people requesting assistance
  º Increase in inequalities
  º Increase in personal savings – accumulation that exceeds the norm which if it were to prolong presents a risk

= Financial education should be treated like our health

 

> Prof. Annamaria Lusardi – director of the Ministerial Committee for the planning and coordination of financial education activities

• Social initiatives have shown us the power of schools that transform young people into financial champions
• Experimenting with new projects
• Monitor the objectives and results achieved
• ESG issues are even more important today
• We need to talk about equity for social development
• The pandemic is changing the world around us but is underlining the importance of financial literacy

= Similarity of the effects between a disease and low levels of financial knowledge, because it affects the poorest and most exposed

 

> Chiara Monticone – Senior Analyst OECD

• National strategies for financial literacy
  º Data, analysis, mapping
  º Coordination and governance
  º Independence, skills, personal capacity, resources and possibly executive powers
  º Appropriate and sustainable resources
  º Role of public, private and non-profit entities
  º Monitoring and evaluation of the strategy with respect to the set objectives

• Financial literacy and the various sectors of the financial landscape

• Effective implementation of financial literacy programs
  º Competence guidelines
  º Capacity of recipients
  º Start on a small scale
  º Sensitive moments
  º Enrich financial knowledge but above all encourage changes in behavior and attitudes
  º Take into account the psychological biases and real behavior of people
  º Evaluate the impact and effectiveness

• Start of a new process
  º Political commitment of implementation

= The costs of inaction and ignorance are very high

INFE/OCSE Global Financial Literacy Survey 2020

The results of the Global Financial Literacy Survey have been presented on the 25th of June by OECD, outlining a terrible performance of Italy in terms of financial literacy. In fact, with just 11.1 points in the Financial Literacy Score, Italy reaches the last place in the ranking, below OECD countries’ average (13 points), as well as the 26 states that have participated to the survey’s average (12.7).

The poor financial knowledge is the most negatively affecting feature to the absolute result: with 3.9 points out of 7, Italian adults’ score is the worst among the Central Europe’s countries, second only to Romania.
Finally, another negative domestic primacy concerns (unfortunately) the gender gap in the overall score: Italian women, with Colombians, had collected the worst results among all the participants.

With the engagement to fill the gender gap and the digital divide, Global Thinking Foundation works everyday to enhance resilience, well-being and financial inclusion to prevent economic abuse and the Foundation will participate for the third year to the Financial Education’s Month, organized by the Italian Programming and Coordinating Financial Education’s Activities Committee.

Click here to check out the Report (English version)

Third Survey – 2020 starts uphill for EDUFIN in Italy

On May 7, 2020, the 2018 results of the third survey of the Program for International Students Assessment (PISA) on the level of financial education of 15-year-old male and female students from the 20 participating countries were presented in Paris.
Observing the PISA 2018 ranking, Estonia ranks first, Indonesia closes the ranking and Italy is below the OECD average (505 points) with 476 points, worsening the performance of the previous cycle of 2015. Furthermore, as many as 20% of Italian students do not reach the necessary level, which presupposes understanding the importance of a simple personal budget.

In all countries, a strong correlation is evident between the results in financial literacy and those in mathematics and reading. Still, also, in this case, Italy is an exception, where the performance in financial literacy is 15 points lower than that in mathematics and reading.
The 2018 photography does not show sizeable overall gender gaps: only 2% of boys performed better than girls, but there is another Italian exception, with an average of males 15 points higher than that of females.

Distance learning and at home, and multidisciplinary choice
Student performance does not necessarily have a positive connection with the country’s GDP or with the ability to access basic financial products. It, therefore, becomes essential to analyze other aspects such as the inclusion of business education in school curricula and other behavioural and attitudinal issues related to money. In this sense, Italy is in the penultimate position for children’s exposure to learning financial notions at school.

According to OECD experts, to fill these gaps, national governments should adopt a multidisciplinary approach to create national financial education strategies that support young people. It will be crucial paying attention to socio-economic and gender divergences, which provide safe access to financial services, exploiting the training potential that digitalization offers above all in this emergency context and which preserve the construction of good habits at family and school level.

 

Gender differences in mathematics and science assessment

1) Gender gap in math skills assessment.
In OECD countries, the average score in math skills is 5 points higher for boys. In Italy, this difference is even higher: 16 points. This gender gap in math skills seems to be more evident in medium-high score groups than in lower score groups.

2) Gender gap in science skills assessment.
For the first time compared to past cycles, in which sciences have been the main assessment area, the gender gap in scientific literacy has changed its course: the international average scores 2 points higher for girls.
In 2018, Italy-related results show that there aren’t statistical differences in boys and girls scores (470 vs 466). Analysing the different study programs, we can see a remarkable gender gap in high schools, where boys score, in average, 25 points more than girls. This gender gap is even more meaningful, although more moderate, in technical institutes. Instead, in the other study programs, the scores of boys and girls, in average, are not statistically dissimilar.

OECD/INFE Meetings – 2019

10th-11th October 2019, Rio de Janeiro, at the “Symposium on financial education and the annual meeting of the OECD/CVM Centre on financial education and literacy, in America and in the Caribbean”
The Symposium has seen speakers from different corners of the world bring to the audience attention their respective domestic experiences in the financial education field. One element was common in all the experiences shared: digital technologies are increasingly integrated into the financial industry and their impacts are steadily harder. Furthermore, it has been discussed about the new generations and the PISA 2015 results that allow us to compare the financial literacy level of 15-years-old boys and girls students from all over the world. These data increase our awareness of the urgent need for financial education to create a well-functioning ecosystem, where financial education is the water, which is fundamental for life.

OECD Gender Initiative – 2019

The initiative aims to analyze the barriers that limit gender equality in education areas, in the labor world and in entrepreneurship, in order to monitor the progress that governments made and to provide best practices based on analytical and reliable data.

March 2019, at the conference cycle “March on Gender Toward Digital Inclusion”.

There are multiple ways in which the digital revolution can positively impact social inclusion, especially in gender equality matters.

In this direction, we have discussed women’s entrepreneurship, digital innovation and access to the credit for women in developing countries, and the ways to stem the digital gender gap.

5th-6th-February 2020, “High-Level Conference on Ending Violence Against Women”.

The attention was focused on domestic partner violence and, more specifically, on how to deal with the main implications of this phenomenon. For starters, the barriers in accessing justice and creating survivor-centered justice pathways, going through the analysis of harmful masculinity, in which are rooted the manifestations of this kind of violence. Not forgetting the lack of comparable data in order to measure the phenomenon, which are fundamental for structuring effective policies.

OECD Annual Fourm – 2019

The OECD Forum has been created in 2000 to discuss the key economic and social challenges on the international agenda. This event represents a unique opportunity to engage policy-shapers and influencers from across all sectors of society to discuss the initiative and to create solutions through sharing experiences and contributing to critical thinking on global policy trends.

The 20th OECD Forum has been focused on the analysis of the changes that our society is going through, due to global trends and resulting challenges. How will the labor market be reshaped in the foreseeable future as a result of mega-trendschange?

A very impactful trend is digitalization that is raging in all areas of life. Indeed, we are witnessing a real digital revolution.

According to OECD’s data, in the labor market scenario, 14% of professions will risk total automation, and 32% will be involved into a radical reorganization.