Retirement Commissioner Diana Crossan says that young people face far more complex financial decisions than their parents had to yet they aren't being taught the skills to make these decisions.

She says teaching financial skills from an early age will equip people to make well-informed financial decisions throughout their life.

"This means that they can be better prepared financially for their retirement."

The commission has set up its personal financial education in schools project that aims in the early stages to improve the teaching of financial literacy.

"Despite some successful programmes being run in schools by the Retirement Commission and the Enterprise New Zealand Trust, we are concerned at the vast number of New Zealanders who leave school without having had the opportunity to learn personal financial skills," Crossan says.

She believes that "we need to embed financial skills into the school curriculum."

The commission has appointed Lester Taylor to manage the project. He is the former chief executive of the Dunedin College of Education and for the past four years was chief executive of the Education New Zealand Trust.

Taylor says the commission is aware of the "already overloaded curriculum" and isn't proposing financial literacy be included immediately. Rather a lot of relevant content is already being taught in schools and it's now a matter of

Taylor will be working with teachers, educationalists and other interested parties to bring the project together.

One of the breakthroughs which has got this project off the ground is that it now has ministerial support. Earlier approaches to government to have financial literacy included into the school programmes had been unsuccessful.

Besides the school programme the commission is also looking at doing a survey to find out about the level of financial literacy in adult New Zealanders. A similar survey was done in Australia earlier this year.

The commission's personal financial education in schools project is supported by the ministers of finance and education, the Secretary of Treasury, Governor of the Reserve Bank, Secretary of Education and the head of the Securities Commission.