A total of 5,681 schools across the country had students awarded for their results in the Financial Education Direct Treasury Olympiad. The competition had the participation of 540 thousand students and awarded prizes to 60 thousand students. The organization estimates that it has impacted around 2 million people, including family members and the school community. 
The competition was a joint initiative of the National Treasury Secretariat (STN) and the São Paulo Stock Exchange (B3), and included partners such as the Ministry of Education, state education departments and the Central Bank.
The tests, held in September, were divided into three levels, according to the participants’ education, which included students from the 6th to 9th year of Elementary School and the 1st year of High School. The 10% of students with the best performance will receive gold, silver, bronze and honorary medals.
One of the winners was student Matheus Vinicius Dourado, who studied at CEF 10, in the city of Gama, in the Federal District, and won the gold medal in the competition. “The learning journey was really good and a lot of fun overall. Knowing how to spend, where to invest, where not to spend, the most you can spend, is as important as some school subjects”, says the student.
For teacher Elaine Buchi, from the state school Vicente Rizzo, in a neighborhood of Águas de Lindoia, a city of less than 15 thousand inhabitants in the interior of São Paulo, the competition was an opportunity to reinforce the content of the financial education classes that began to take place. minister this year based on a clear objective.
The teacher prepared classes from the 6th year of Elementary School to the 1st year of High School. For her, the older students, who already took financial education classes, had more ease with the content and were more interested. “Many already work, so with them it was much easier to work on these subjects, because some even started to invest, they opened accounts and started investing”, said Elaine.
For her, the biggest challenge was working with the sixth and seventh years. “To them I was telling them something completely outside their reality, so I started to take videos that explained it in a more playful way, to start understanding the basis”, which was a longer process for the mathematics teacher. “It showed how the concepts work in everyday life, based on financial planning activities that their parents carry out, making comparisons”, he added.
She also took advantage of her knowledge in the area to bring colleagues and show that even in small towns it is possible to invest and manage resources. Some families even gave more direct feedback, looking for her at school to tell her how the children took the contents home, “how they made a “little box”, how they asked to open accounts and saved money little by little, and some even thought about goals future, like saving for college”, said teacher Elaine.
Its students are now awaiting the arrival of more than a hundred medals, which should be distributed at the beginning of 2025. The school is also competing for a kit of teaching materials worth R$100,000. There will be 2 kits drawn among participating institutions, per state, with no distribution date yet.
The state of São Paulo had the largest number of entries and also the largest number of winners, with more than 13 thousand medalists among 111 thousand participants. The network already has financial education classes in part of the state network, after a controversial reform of its curriculum.
“The success of the Olympics shows that we are facing a great opportunity to better prepare our young people and, with this, build a promising future for everyone. This result left us very satisfied and inspires us to prepare a second edition with more news and even more success”, said Rogério Ceron, Secretary of the National Treasury, in a statement.
