SMART$

SMART$ is a Theatre-in-Education programme designed to provoke thinking and conversation around every day financial decisions and opportunities impacting young people.

Designed for Year 9 - 11 students, SMART$ combines theatre and workshop elements to encourage audience input and engagement.

The performance tells the story of three young people as they navigate various everyday financial decisions. It demonstrates the potential impacts of decisions including savings, deferred payment schemes, credit card use and KiwiSaver.

By telling a story that is relevant to young people through actors that they can relate to, students explore the learning points and feel comfortable contributing to the workshop elements and further discussion.

SMART$ was launched in May 2020, and has since been touring secondary schools nationwide.

Read the SMART$ Outcome Summary.

Why theatre?

Theatre-in-Education (TiE) is a unique learning experience supporting a wide range of learning styles and behaviours. TiE is frequently used as an educational tool to explore social behaviour and attitudes using social cognitive theory. Social cognitive theory (SCT) holds that portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences.

SMART$ online financial literacy resources

SMART$ online learning modules are designed to help teachers of any subject cover financial literacy. Each module contains an entertaining video and quiz – perfect for form time, mentor or hauora classes. There are seven modules: Budgeting, Banking, Savings, Debt, Insurance, KiwiSaver and Deferred Payment Schemes (like Afterpay). SMART$ online modules are free and available for anybody to use on the Stacks financial literacy platform.

Funding

Life Education is supported by PMG Charitable Trust and other community funders to provide the SMART$ programme and SMART$ Online, enabling it to be provided at no charge to schools.