QE’s electoral triumph! Avi’s bid to boost financial education sways young voters in Barnet schools
While candidates in Barnet and other London boroughs today celebrate their election as councillors or lick their wounds after losing their seats, QE pupil Avi Aggarwal is savouring his own electoral victory.
Year 10’s Avi has been elected to Barnet’s Youth Assembly. It is understood he garnered some 1,800 votes from across the borough’s schools.
Avi will be serving as a Youth Ambassador, seeking to advance financial education in the curriculum in schools across Barnet and beyond.
Headmaster Neil Enright said: “I offer my congratulations to Avi and commend him for the initiative he has shown. We wish him every success in his role.
“Ever since Queen Elizabeth I granted our founding charter in 1573 for ‘the establishment of the Free Grammar School of Queen Elizabeth in Barnet’, we have maintained strong local roots at QE: it is therefore great to see pupils taking part in local democracy. It’s also very much in line with being ‘community-orientated’ – one of the six priorities of our Boundless School plan.”
Delivering financial education is a statutory obligation in UK secondary schools. In England, it covers topics such as budgeting, credit & debt, insurance, savings, and pensions. At QE, aspects of personal finance are taught in Maths lessons and, through the Personal Development Time Curriculum, in tutor groups.
Nationally, there is growing recognition across the education system of the need for more innovative and collaborative approaches to ensure pupils gain the financial literacy skills they need for the future.
In a curriculum review that is currently under way, the Government is placing a strong emphasis on strengthening financial literacy in schools as part of its overall aim of giving young people the skills for life and work. The new curriculum is due to be implemented for first teaching from September 2028.
Avi said: “Financial education is something people are always talking about, but which still has a long way to go to give all young people vital skills they need to succeed professionally and financially later in their lives.”
He secured one of two Youth Ambassador seats, fighting off a challenge from four other candidates. He plans to use his new position to lobby for change.
“To help out with the journey, for the last few months I have been campaigning to become Youth Ambassador so that I can create lasting change at both a grassroots level throughout my own borough’s schools and also throughout the rest of the UK through the upcoming 2028 curriculum refresh.”
He will now work to deliver on his campaign’s promises through his two-year term of office.
Barnet Youth Assembly is this year celebrating its tenth year of operation, having been originally established in 2015, before stopping and then re-starting in 2023.
Avi’s friend and fellow Year 10 pupil, Siddharth Kumar, also stood in the election, narrowly missing out on a seat. Siddharth’s manifesto policy was on Improving Transport in Barnet, looking at how roadwork repair could be more efficient, and introducing more cycling and walking pathways, as part of urban greening.