To implement the arrangement and requirement of "urging the inclusion of investor education into compulsory education in developed areas" by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) organized the 1st Joint Exhibition of National Investor Education Base of Securities Companies and also the Seminar on Teenagers' Financial Quality Education on November 25, 2018, on the occasion of co-organizing the Shanghai High School Students' Economic Forum. Officials from Pudong New Area (Shanghai), relevant departments of the Shanghai education system and the SSE were present. Among those taking part in activity were over 300 people including teachers, students, experts and parents from 25 schools including Shanghai Dongchang High School, representatives from the investor education bases of 19 SSE members, and several mainstream media like CCTV (China Central Television) and CBN (China Business Network).
In recent years, developed countries, such as the US, Britain and Japan, have fully integrated investor education in national education and upgraded the financial education to a national strategy. Many institutions in China, like securities companies, media and schools, have also made continuous explorations and attempts in cultivating teenagers' financial quality. To fully integrate industry resources, the SSE has joined hands with all circles to initiate the "Teenagers' Financial Quality N+1" activity on March 15 of this year, with a view to boosting professional, diversified and continuous financial quality cultivation. The Joint Exhibition and also the Seminar aim to explore a financial quality cultivation mode that suits the cultural education idea and features of teenagers' growth in China.
The Joint Exhibition: Creating Off-school Financial Classrooms for Teenagers
In recent years, many SSE members have built national or provincial investor education bases which have served as an important window for investors to get "one-stop" knowledge and services on investor education and the off-school classrooms popularizing financial education. To guide these bases to function as a window, a platform and a bridge, the SSE has organized 19 SSE members' investor education bases to display the works of teenagers' financial education about consumption, saving and investment to more than 300 attendees including teachers, students and parents at the Shanghai High School Students' Economic Forum. For example, Huafu Securities Investor Education Base gave publicity foldouts on financial knowledge education and financial risk control; China Galaxy Securities Investor Education Base demonstrated the "Galaxy Q&A King" financial education activity. The students and their parents said that the Joint Exhibition with abundant contents and diversified forms gathered superior resources of all bases and delivered a great off-school class to students, which helped to expand their financial vision and add brilliance to the Shanghai High School Students' Economic Forum.
The Shanghai High School Students' Economic Forum is hosted by Pudong New Area Education Bureau and Lujiazui Financial City Development Bureau and undertaken by Dongchang High School affiliated to East China Normal University. It includes essays competition and students' debates focusing on the "financial regulation and industry self-regulation in the context of preventing and resolving financial risks". The SSE Investor Education Base supported the forum, and it has organized nearly 100 rounds of "Walk into SSE" activities for students since its operation in March this year, making it an important platform for the students to contact with the capital market. At the forum, the SSE received the Shanghai Financial Literacy Cultivation Base Certificate from the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and joined the Dongchang Financial Alliance upon the invitation of Dongchang High School to carry out more activities on teenagers' financial quality education in the future. At the site, the SSE made a questionnaire survey on high school students' financial quality to grasp the teenagers' awareness on financial knowledge and their focuses and demands on financial quality; it set up a "New Financial Star" Investor Education Base Volunteer Team targeting teachers and students in secondary schools, colleges and universities to engage in the voluntary explanation in the SSE Investor Education Base and carry out financial activities in schools, in a bid to strengthen the connection and complementarity between the base and the schools.
Pull together to Draw a Blueprint for Financial Quality Education
Strengthening teenagers' financial quality education is increasingly important along with the Chinese economic and social development. After the Joint Exhibition, the SSE organized representatives of SSE members' investor education bases to hold the Seminar on Teenagers' Financial Quality Education, in a bid to share experience, promote communication and build consensuses. The representatives present generally believed that there is still difficulty for the teenagers' financial quality education in China. Some said that the teenagers' financial quality education in China lacks top-level design, and relevant policies and institution design needs improvement. Besides, there is no unified and standard teaching guideline and courses, which are not good for the popularization of financial quality education. With regard to the specific method of financial quality education, some said that the financial quality education should focus on intensifying its suitability and differentiation, offering different contents to teenagers according to their ages.
At the seminar, the representatives of all the members' investor education bases expressed their ideas freely and offered advice and suggestions. They agreed after discussion that the in-depth development of teenagers' financial quality education cannot be separated with the cooperation and resource sharing among financial institutions, research institutes, education institutions and investor education bases, and efforts should be made in terms of financial teaching faculty, home education and others. In the future, relevant parties should join hands to make entertainment-featured investor education works that are close to teenagers' life and carry out more popular investor education activities with a wider scope.
In 2018, the SSE has given full play to its professional platform and personnel advantage, set up the financial quality education expansion courses together with primary and secondary schools, built an entity investor education base, and kept exploring the ways and methods of including investor education into the national education system. In the future, the SSE will cluster and integrate relevant resources and forces to further intensify the theoretical research and practical exploration on financial quality education, build an open, inclusive and efficient teenagers' financial quality education system under the guidance of the Socialist Core Values, and guide students to erect scientific values and life goals, thus fueling the cultivation and improvement of the national financial quality.
