Can't count on banks to teach kids about cash; the readers' champion.

Byline: LESLEY CAMPBELL

I'VE always found it ludicrous that the people teaching finance in schools work for banks.

After all, what they want is a customer base consisting of undisciplined borrowers who stray off the straight and narrow a couple of times a month, paying pounds 35 each time, but who never actually go bust.

Why should we think that banks are the right people to talk to children about how to manage their finances? They can't even run their own banks.

I'm hoping that the new initiative announced by Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop to teach every child in Scotland basic financial skills will not take the usual cheap short cut of using banks' material.

I'm hoping it will, instead, turn to people who know how banks cause financial misery and foster bad money-management practices.

Let a bank into a school and, if it were really honest, this is what it would teach our children: Lesson One: Give no thought to how much you're earning or the remote possibility that house prices may not continue to rise every year until the end of time. Take out a mortgage paying no attention to the fact that you will not be able to afford in two years' time.

Lesson Two: Take out a credit card and pay us 25% interest when the base rate is 0.5%. Use it as much as you can paying the minimum amount off every month (forgetting to do that once or twice a year).

Lesson Three: Take out insurance policies to protect you against misfortune and don't consider for a moment that the policy probably won't actually pay out when you need it. (And instead of paying a small premium every month, we suggest you work out how much all your premiums will be over the next 20 years and borrow the entire amount from us - plus a hefty interest charge.)

Lesson Three: Understand how banks work. We lend you money when all the other banks are lending money and we stop when they stop. It has nothing to do with you, your business, or your needs. We just follow the herd. Bear in mind that if we've had a bad year, so will you.

Lesson Four: Come along to us for impartial financial advice. The fact that our staff are paid a commission for every product they sell does not mean that they will simply push something at you irrespective of your needs. No, no, not at all.

Lesson Five: Don't bother reading the small print when you open an account; take our word for the fact that we'll look after you.

And don't believe the recent report from the European Commission saying that information given to some banks' customers was "incomprehensible" and fees were "opaque". We have nothing to hide.

One of the findings of the report the government commissioned on finance education in schools was that some teachers lack the confidence to teach basic skills to their pupils.

I would maintain that it would be more helpful for pupils to hear about these teachers' real life mortgage or insurance problems than some waffle from a banker trying to harvest a new generation of befuddled but compliant customers.

The people teaching finance skills in schools should be from the other side of the divide - from the Citizens Advice Bureau and the debt counselling agencies.

Not only will they warn pupils of the dangers of being seduced by the banks' short-term promises, they can teach the pupils how to defend themselves when the honeymoon is over and the avuncular, generous bank suddenly bares its teeth and demands all its money back.

One of the bodies currently producing material to teach finance in schools is called pfeg (personal finance education group) which describes its status as follows: "Pfeg is an independent charity which gets its funding from a variety of supporters in government, the sector and in business.

"We are not affiliated to, or led by, any one organisation and do not, in any way, market or sell financial products or services."

I believe that financial institutions provide a great deal of help for organisations such as pfeg, but I also consider it naive not to think that carrying the logo of a financial institution on any of the pfeg material is not advertising. Of course it is.

Using bank-branded material is tantamount to endorsing the bank and is advertising by the back door - a much more subtle and powerful route.

The website of Learning and Teaching Scotland contains a programme called Money Sense produced by RBS, carrying its logo.

Looking back over the recent actions of RBS - reckless lending, irrational expensive purchases, failure to take action even when a crisis was clearly looming - are these really the people we want teaching finance to our children?

I TRY to help everyone who writes in, but sometimes the volume of letters makes this impossible.

Please put your full name and phone number on your letter or email. Don't send any original documents or include your account details.

You can email me at readers [e-mail] or write to me, Lesley Campbell, at Daily Record, One Central Quay, Glasgow G3 8DA