Everyday experience and various empirical studies show that many people are not really familiar with economic questions and problems. Generally speaking, economic competence is not well developed in population. This is especially true for German students and poses quite a severe problem because economic competence is not only relevant for a rather small group of people who deal with economic decisions in their working life. Economic competence is an important prerequisite for everybody in order to secure one’s existence and to participate in a functioning free market economy (Brandlmeier et al. 2006, 17). Reasons for deficits in economic competence could be that: a) School curricula do not include sufficient economic education (Liening 2004). German secondary schools either have a more general educational orientation or they are vocational schools, e.g. in technology or economics. Even if researchers and practitioners argue that everybody should have a basic education in economy, economic contents are not systematically integrated in the curriculum of schools that provide a general education. b) Teachers themselves do not have enough economic competence to teach economics well. Teacher education in Germany follows the division in “general” and “vocational”. Whereas teachers for vocational schools do have a profound economical background and are perfectly able to teach economics, teachers for schools that provide a general education do not necessarily posses these competences. In a recent pilot study we analysed if the reason why many German students show a rather severe lack of economic competence could be a) due to the fact that economic topics are not integrated in their curriculum or b) if we can assume that the lack of students’ competence might go back to a lack of teacher competence.

Research question a) to what extend do school curricula include economic education? Exemplarily we analysed curricula of the German state Hesse for three types of German schools that offer general education . All subjects were checked whether they include economics topics.

They show that the amount of economic education is of course different in the three types of schools but it is indeed integrated to quite a substantial part in the curriculum of all three types. We therefore have to decline the first assumption that the deficit of economic competence lies in curriculum deficits. Research question b) do (future) teachers have sufficient economic competence? To analyse basic economic competence of future teachers we tested a sample of students enrolled in teacher education programmes (general education) at Frankfurt University (N = 97). As test instrument we used a German version of the internationally known Test of Economic Literacy (TEL, Soper & Walstad 1987; WBT, Beck, Krumm & Dubs 1998). As the test does not specify a fixed level that can be labelled as “sufficient economic competence”, we compared the results of future teachers with results of students in general education (Gymnasium). Findings: Results show that future teachers have about the same level of competence as students. Therefore it cannot be expected that they will be able to help their students to obtain more economic competence. Conclusions: If we take into account that (future) teachers do not have a sound economic competence it can be expected that they won’t be able to teach economics well. It is therefore not surprising that German students show deficits in economic competence. The situation could be improved immensely it economics were part of every teacher education programme. As the curriculum analyses have shown, all curricula include economic topics and question. Therefore all teachers should have basic competences in economics to enable them to teach well. But Frankfurt University (as many other universities do) gives students in teacher education programmes a choice: they can but they don’t have to attend courses with economic contents. And – if given the choice – students often avoid these courses (in our sample most teacher students indicated that they have not attended any economically oriented courses yet and did not plan to do so in future; Wuttke 2008). Obligatory economics courses are therefore necessary in teacher education programmes to ensure competent teachers.