As the financial landscape for consumers becomes increasingly complex, the importance of facilitating financial capability increases. Although most financial decisions are made by adults, there is a burgeoning interest in providing financial education to children in the hope that they will develop the skills needed to successfully manage their finances in adulthood. This study uses an experimental design to evaluate a set of standardized financial education lessons delivered to fourth and fifth graders in two different school districts. We find that even a relatively brief program results in knowledge gains that persist one year later. While measuring financial behaviors in this age group is challenging, students exposed to financial education have more positive attitudes about personal finance and appear more likely to save. These results show that younger students can learn financial topics and that learning is associated with improved attitudes and behaviors which, if sustained, may result in increased financial capability later in life.

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This article reviews the evaluation literature on financial education and counseling for adults in order to synthesize implications for research and practice. Most evaluations report positive impacts, but the findings are often small when compared with valid comparison groups. Many evaluations use self‐reported measures, measure outcomes over short time periods and cannot rule out selection bias due to nonrandomized designs, all of which may bias results. Although future research and practice in this field hold promise, more attention to theory‐based evaluations and further investment in randomized field experiments may be fruitful.

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Adopting a sociocultural theoretical framework and based on ethnographic data from two primary schools, this article seeks to answer the question: what meanings about inclusion and exclusion are encoded in school and classroom practices? It documents the (inclusionary and) exclusionary pedagogic processes that influence learning and children's participation in the learning opportunities on offer to them. From their analysis of observational, interview and documentary data, externally‐imposed and monitored regimes of assessment are what really matters in the school lives of the year six children in the authors' fieldwork schools. Assessment, narrowed to testing, defines the school day, the curriculum, the teacher's responsibilities, the pupil's worth, the ideal parent, and what counts as ability; it pushes towards a particular type of learning at the expense of other types. The article begins with a brief theoretical and methodological account of the study and a note on each participating school. It then suggests and discusses models of ‘SATurated pupildom' that are supported by the data. Versions of learning and ability as well as teacher subject positions that variously fit with the demands of summative assessments for accountability purposes, but that do not square with valuing diversity, are also discussed. The conclusion briefly considers the findings in the context of a macro‐culture that circumscribes what schools and teachers must value most and in relation to tensions within New Labour's push for standardisation on the one hand and inclusion and social justice on the other.

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