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Foxtel goes to Money School

Scott Pape in Money School

Australian pay TV platform Foxtel has ordered a four-part documentary that features the creator of a new money education programme for primary and secondary school kids.

Essential Media is producing Money School for Foxtel’s Lifestyle channel, with production investment from Screen Australia.

The show centres on former investment advisor Scott Pape, whose first book, The Barefoot Investor – The Only Money Guide You’ll Ever Need, sold 1.6 million copies in Australia.

Published last September, the follow-up, The Barefoot Investor for Families, broke the record for first-week sales of non-fiction in the country.

Pape launched the Barefoot Money Movement in May, supported by nearly 9,000 school principals and teachers. More than 2,000 schools – one in five of all Australian schools – have applied to join the initiative, which aims to teach children financial skills.

Pape said: “Kids spend a total of around 2,300 days at school. Yet not even one of those days is dedicated to teaching them essential money skills. Debt is tearing families and communities apart – a quarter of the nation can’t repay their credit cards, and a million homeowners are under stress. It’s clear that money education needs to be better.

“Too many Australians don’t have the skills to pay the bills. Most of us had to learn these skills the hard way, because we were never taught them in school. Our kids deserve better. My goal is that by teaching the kids, we help their parents too. And when we help parents, we can change the nation.”

Wendy Moore, Foxtel group general manager of Lifestyle, added: “It’s incredibly rewarding for the Lifestyle team to be working with Scott to capture such a fabulous, positive movement that literally starts from the ground up. That we can take this knowledge to such a wide audience is so powerful, and the fact that it is so authentically Australian makes it a perfect project for our audience.”

Money School will premiere on Foxtel’s Lifestyle channel early next year. Essential Media, which controls rights to the show in the rest of the world, is yet to appoint an international distributor for the show.

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