At the time we had a clear conviction and an unproven product: that children should learn about money properly, early, and in a way they actually enjoy. Conviction is a start. It isn’t a programme schools can run.
What the accelerator was for
GovTech accelerators exist to help small companies work with the public sector — which is a different discipline from selling to consumers. Institutions ask harder questions, and they ask them earlier: how do you evidence it works, how do you safeguard children, how does this fit alongside what teachers already have to deliver.
Those questions shaped what Smartmonies became.
The most valuable lesson was an uncomfortable one: enthusiasm for a good cause is not the same as a programme that stands up to scrutiny. That pushed us towards accreditation, which we went on to achieve.
What it changed
- We got serious about evidence rather than assertion
- Safeguarding became part of the design, not a policy bolted on afterwards
- We learned to describe the programme in terms institutions recognise — outcomes, age ranges, delivery models
- It set us on the path to independent accreditation
Everything since — the ten-lesson structure, the work with schools, the Quality Mark — traces back to questions first asked properly here.
Where that work ended up: the ten lessons → and our accreditation →