Free financial literacy resources for Indian schools
Before you evaluate a paid program, know what already exists for free. This is the material we would point any school to first — including the parts of it that are genuinely good, and the gap none of it fills.
In short
- The NCFE–CBSE financial education workbooks cover Classes VI–X and cost nothing to download.
- NFLAT gives you a free national benchmark for Classes VIII–X: 60 minutes, 75 questions, English and Hindi.
- The free material is strong on mechanics and near-silent on behavior — which is the gap you should be shopping for.
- You can run a genuine financial literacy activity period this week with paper and a board.
We run a paid program, so it may seem odd for us to open with a list of things you can get for free. But it is the honest starting point: a school that does not know what already exists cannot judge what a vendor is adding. And in our experience the schools that use the free material first ask much sharper questions afterwards.
1. NCFE–CBSE financial education workbooks
The National Centre for Financial Education and CBSE jointly produced financial education workbooks covering Classes VI to X. They are free to download from the NCFE website.
The Class IX book gives a fair sense of the level: understanding insurance and its types, cheques and demand drafts, opening a bank account, and government schemes — worked through with fill-in-the-blanks, MCQs, budgeting exercises, case studies and crosswords.
How to use it well: hand one chapter to a teacher as a single activity period, not as a book to be completed. The case studies and the budgeting exercises are the strongest parts; the crosswords are filler. It is well-made, curriculum-aligned material and there is no reason to pay anyone to reproduce it.
2. NFLAT — a free national benchmark
NCFE runs the National Financial Literacy Assessment Test for students of Classes VIII, IX and X. It is 60 minutes and 75 questions, offered in English and Hindi, and covers the basics of banking, securities markets, insurance and pension. NCFE also runs a Money Smart School Program for schools that want a broader association.
Why it is worth a calendar slot: it gives you an external number to report to parents and your board, and a before-and-after measure if you later run anything of your own. Very few free assessments in any subject are this easy to justify.
3. RBI and SEBI investor-education material
The regulators publish public financial-awareness material — comics, booklets and posters on saving, banking and avoiding fraud. Quality varies and much of it is pitched at adults, but the fraud-awareness content is genuinely useful for Grade 9 and above, where students are starting to use digital payments.
One caution: anything from a market regulator inevitably drifts towards investing. For a 12–15 age group, take the fraud and banking material and leave the markets material alone — our reasoning for that line is in what a Grades 7–9 curriculum should cover.
4. Ten classroom activities, from us, free
The behavioral half is where free material runs out, so we have published ours. Ten financial literacy activities that work in a classroom includes, for each one, the time it takes, what you need, the pattern it exposes and the debrief question that makes it land.
They need paper and a board. No slides, no licence, no attribution. Several are five minutes long and can be dropped into a maths or EVS period without disrupting anything. Take them and use them whether or not you ever speak to us.
The gap none of it fills
Assemble everything above and you have good coverage of the mechanics of money: accounts, interest, insurance, fraud, government schemes. What you will not have is anything addressing why a student who can define a budget still cannot keep one.
| Covered well, free | Barely covered anywhere |
|---|---|
| Banking, cheques, account opening | Why gift money spends differently from earned money |
| Insurance types and purpose | Buying to belong — peer pressure and FOMO |
| Interest and basic budgeting | Why a discount changes what something feels worth |
| Fraud and digital payment safety | Regret: what predicts it, and how to avoid it |
| A national assessment (NFLAT) | Any way to measure behavior rather than knowledge |
That right-hand column is behavioral financial literacy, and it is the half that determines whether the left-hand column ever gets used. If you are evaluating a paid program, the right question is not "what do you cover?" — the free material covers a lot. It is "what do you cover that the NCFE workbooks do not?"
A no-cost plan for this term
- This week: run two activities from our list in an existing activity period. Fifteen minutes, no preparation.
- This month: download the NCFE workbook for your grade and give one chapter to a teacher as a single period.
- This term: register a batch for NFLAT and get a baseline number.
- Then decide whether you need anything paid — and you will know exactly what to ask for.
We always begin with a demo lecture — a real, full-length session delivered to your students at absolutely no cost. We would rather the students did the convincing.
If after all that you want the behavioral half taught properly, that is what we do: three 60-minute sessions for Grades 7–9, delivered in person, nothing for your teachers to prepare. See the program or book the free demo session.