The Educfi is the passport for economic, budgetary, and financial education deployed by the Banque de France in schools. This program assesses, in the form of a quiz, students’ basic financial skills: reading a bank statement, understanding an interest rate, managing a monthly budget. The skills tested are aligned with the European framework of financial competencies for children and young people in the European Union, giving the passport a scope that goes beyond the French school curriculum.
Educfi and European framework: a quiz based on standardized competencies
The Educfi passport is not just a home-made questionnaire designed by a teacher. The quiz items correspond to competencies identified at the European level. This structure ensures that the concepts evaluated (understanding a price, distinguishing a need from a want, reading the terms of a loan) are comparable from one country to another.
This European dimension changes the nature of the program. A student taking the Educfi passport in France works on the same conceptual foundation as a student assessed in another member state. For teachers, this means that the educational resources provided by the Banque de France are based on a structured reference framework, not on an arbitrary list of topics.
Understanding the usefulness of the Educfi Banque de France involves grasping this connection between a national tool and a competency framework shared at the community level.
Which students take the Educfi passport
The program targets a wide audience:
- Fourth-grade general students, who have been the historical audience for the passport since its launch.
- SEGPA students, for whom budget and financial independence issues often arise earlier in their education.
- Third-grade pre-vocational students, engaged in pathways where professional integration is a near horizon.
- All CAP and professional second-year students, who may need to manage a first salary or a short-term internship allowance.
This extension of the target audience makes sense. A CAP student who signs an apprenticeship contract needs to know how to read a payslip and calculate disposable income even before graduating. The Educfi passport anticipates these concrete situations by assessing financial skills at the moment they become useful.
Timing for assessment: when to organize Educfi during the school year
Contrary to what some presentations of the program suggest, no national date is imposed for the administration of the passport. The timing is at the pedagogical discretion of teachers and the organization specific to each institution.
The Financial Education Week, which takes place every spring, is a favorable time. Several institutions choose this period to concentrate awareness-raising actions and the administration of the quiz. It is a practical choice, not a regulatory obligation.
Adapting the timing to the educational project
A mathematics teacher covering percentages in November can easily integrate the passport into that sequence. An economics and social sciences teacher addressing consumption in January has another relevant time slot.
The key point to remember: the passport works better when it fits into an existing progression rather than when it comes as an isolated exercise, disconnected from the curriculum. Teachers who use it as a consolidation tool after a chapter on budget or prices achieve better student engagement.
Administrative follow-up and traceability of the Educfi passport
The Educfi passport has evolved since its early versions. Its administration is now integrated into the administrative tools of the National Education system. This integration transforms the program: it is no longer just a one-off educational quiz whose results remain in the teacher’s binder.
The follow-up is tracked in school management systems, allowing educational teams to know which students have taken the passport and to identify recurring gaps at the institution level. For a school principal, this traceability provides a concrete indicator of the financial literacy level of their students.
What the passport does not do
The Educfi passport assesses basic skills. It does not provide professional certification or recognized qualifications in the job market. It does not replace an economics course. Its role is to diagnose: does the student master the minimum financial concepts for their daily life?
This limitation is also its strength. By focusing on simple and verifiable skills (reading a statement, understanding a rate, distinguishing fixed costs from variable costs), the passport remains accessible to all student profiles, including those facing academic difficulties.
National Educfi strategy: the role of the Banque de France as an operator
France has a national strategy for economic, budgetary, and financial education. The Banque de France, designated as the national operator, coordinates its implementation.
In practice, the Banque de France produces educational resources, coordinates partnerships with the National Education system, and animates the network of contributors. The Educfi label identifies actions and materials that comply with the national strategy.
The increasing complexity of financial products (consumer credit, life insurance, crypto-assets) makes this mission increasingly necessary. Students taking the passport today will face financial choices that their parents did not have to make at the same age.
