Quiz forms related to Bay Street Deconstructed at Martingrove Collegiate Institute, designed to teach financial literacy.“It’s a street in downtown Toronto,” shouts a student from the front of the cafeteria.
Knowledge of the role of the financial services industry in Canada and of the career paths available within the sector continues to be a major gap in the education system.Co-founded in 2016 by Eileen Jurczak, a director of trading at BMO Capital Markets, this not-for-profit organization aims to increase awareness in Grade 10 students on how the financial services industry works and introduce them to careers they may not have considered.
Although the school year is drawing to a close, educators are already preparing for the resumption of classes in the fall. Since launching, more than 9,000 students across Canada have attended Bay Street Deconstructed. That number will double as 10,000 students are already booked for the 2019-20 school year.
“There is a real lack of knowledge generally with how the different areas in financial services work, how they fit together and how it impacts their lives," Ms. Jurczak says. “Looking at all the different areas they showed us when we first walked in, I really couldn’t comprehend what each one was,” said Christopher Truce, a Grade 10 business student at Martingrove. “Now, I have a greater understanding of what a business needs to do in order to be successful with certain tasks.”