The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is committed to promoting financial literacy among Thai youth. The recent educational initiative so called "INVESTORY Investment Learning Design Bootcamp" has been organized for two consecutive years. The initiative provides knowledge and skills for secondary school teachers to design active learning models on personal finance and investment knowledge for their students. SET aims to further develop an investment curriculum for secondary school students in national education. To date, there are learning facilitators of this initiative in 66 educational institutions nationwide.
SET President Pakorn Peetathawatchai said that SET has continuously promoted financial literacy to the Thai people for over two decades, especially among youths. SET recognized that financial knowledge would lead to good money management skills that youths were able to apply in their daily lives and that teachers played a part in cultivating and transferring such knowledge, thanks to their rapport with deep understanding of their students. SET has therefore provided a learning space for teachers to apply knowledge gained from SET and design suitable investment learning activities to be used in schools with different environment.
"The INVESTORY Investment Learning Design Bootcamp initiative focuses on supporting and preparing secondary school teachers as the students from Grade 7- Grade 12 are interested in learning how to start investing. Laying the foundation from the very beginning is crucial. SET serves as a teacher's coach, providing knowledge, tools, and materials to enable teachers to become learning facilitators. The teachers, in turn, create an active learning process and tailor the teaching materials suitable for the context of each classroom to meet the needs of their students. Until now, this initiative has created investment-learning facilitators in 66 educational institutions across 24 provinces nationwide, reaching a total of 11,422 students. There are currently 19 investment classroom models. SET will continue to develop investment toolkits for teachers to use more easily and conveniently. With this unique opportunity, we are certain that the investment knowledge will be introduced into the Thai education system more broadly," added Pakorn.
This year's "Show & Share" event of INVESTORY Investment Learning Design Bootcamp initiative provides a platform for the teachers to showcase the activities and teaching processes that have been developed and successfully tested in their classrooms to other teachers and the general public. In addition, three investment-learning facilitators from two schools also share their experiences of creating successful investment classrooms.
A teacher at Chulalongkorn University Demonstration Secondary School, and the creator of "Classroom for Wealth" Kamonchanok Sakondhawat said that participating in the first batch of this initiative has given her a clearer understanding on previously misunderstood investment issues and more confidence to teach investment. In addition, she has learned a lot more by networking and exchanging ideas with teams from SET, BlackBox, and teachers from other schools. The teams from SET and BlackBox have provided advice and assistance continuously. Even after completing the first batch of training, there have also been a lot of opportunities to join and update knowledge with learning facilitators in other batches, emphasizing that the training ended but the spirit of the Bootcamp group would continue.
A teacher at Ban Maengonkilek School Chiang Mai Provincial Administrative Organization and a co-creator of "Lights in Highlands" Rattanachat Sarapo said that personal finance and investment knowledge were challenging not only for students, but also for teachers. He has been in a process of trial and error himself to manage his money more appropriately. He believed it would be better for students and teachers to learn together in the classroom in order to change their lives and future using the knowledge from SET.
Another teacher at Ban Maengonkilek School Chiang Mai Provincial Administrative Organization and a co-creator of "Lights in Highlands" Chalermkwan Wongphanit said that for her this initiative was like a sincere friend in designing investment classrooms for students. Knowledge, teaching ideas, and physical as well as mental support from the Bootcamp group brought personal finance and investment knowledge closer to students. Moreover, teachers' attitude towards spending money has been changed after participating in this initiative.
For more information about the INVESTORY Investment Learning Design Bootcamp project, please visit SET's INVESTORY Investment Discovery Museum website: https://investory.setgroup.or.th .