Abstract:

The need to increase financial literacy is stressed especially in conditions of the transition economy where is a part of the overall transformation of the way of thinking of the whole and for each of its members. Based on the thirty years of experiences it can be stated that this ability depends more than a systematic preparation on the practical experience. This is the basis for our research. Our research aims to find out if and how the level of financial literacy increases during the high school studies.

The research was conducted at an eight-year grammar school. The methodology was based on the questioning of the three student groups: the first group includes students of the second class, the second group includes students of the fifth class and the third group includes the students of the eighth class of the grammar school. The used questionnaire was based on the set of questions used in similar research (Belás et al., 2016) but the questions and tasks we have modified concerning the conditions of grammar school.

The results confirmed the higher level of the financial literacy of upper-class students of the grammar school. This confirmed our assumptions that during the study of the high school the financial literacy is increasing as a result of courses oriented on these questions. But these results must not be overestimated in their informative ability – the increase of the elements of financial literacy cannot be unambiguously attributed to secondary school studies, and thus can be an incentive for the further research aimed to find out the role of the practical experiences in the financial literacy increasing or the role of other factors, for example family backgrounds, residence, age, etc.

Keywords:

Financial literacy, High school, Education, Financial decisions.