Ormsgill Primary School's Year 6 pupils have increased their financial literacy through a specialist workshop.

The session was run in partnership between Cumberland Building Society and international tech company Everfi.

The students were challenged to think about distinguishing between needs and wants.

As part of the programme, pupils got into discussions about priority spending, leading to the creation of their own budgets.

The idea was to ensure that essential bills were paid before luxuries could be added to the shopping list.

Pupils suggested a range of 'needs', including food, shelter, clothing, medicine, money for emergencies, and love.

The children then joined a virtual world, playing a game named Vault on their iPads. Through the game the pupils met with characters from a different world, guiding them through tricky financial choices.

Kiera Wilkins, of Everfi, said: “The idea is to raise awareness of managing money and where it goes and to help the characters in the game make financial choices.

“It is about learning to balance budgets and making sure they are more prepared.”

Jessica Corless is Assistant Head and Year 6 Teacher at Ormsgill Primary School, which is part of South Cumbria Multi-Academy Trust.

She said: “Money is something they will be using as an adult and this will help them to understand this better and improve their confidence with money from an early age.

“There is also a careers element as some of the mathematicians in the class that don’t want to go into engineering might now think more about careers in the financial services industry.”

Nigel Taylor, Head of Marketing at The Cumberland, said: “Pupils can often struggle to contextualise how to use their maths skills outside the classroom, but money and money related concepts are where we apply maths most often in daily lives and our programme with EVERFI really helps develop that.

"Learning about money is something lots of people wished they’d done at school, so seeing the sessions come to life at Ormsgill Primary school and offering this to children in our communities is something we’re really proud of, as part of our purpose and commitment to Kinder banking.”