EVERY secondary school in England is to be given £500 to put towards their own charity bank accounts under Home Office plans to encourage a culture of giving among children.

The initiative, to be announced tomorrow, is part of a package of measures on charitable giving entitled A Generous Society.

Pupils will be encouraged to top up the £500 through their own fundraising efforts and will decide which registered charities should receive the money. They will have responsibility for managing the fund, which will be held by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). Paul Goggins, the Home Office minister with responsibility for the charity sector, said that it was hoped that the scheme would foster an ethos of giving among schoolchildren at as young an age as possible.

“We know that schools respond generously when there is a compelling need, such as the tsunami or the Asian earthquake,” he said.

“What we want to do now is to put into people’s minds the notion that giving is something that you do on a long-term basis, not just in response to disasters.” He hopes that the children’s enthusiasm for raising money for charity might also rub off on their parents.

“What we hope to get across is the idea that giving is a personal responsibility over and above the social responsibility that we have to give as tax payers,” Mr Goggins said.

Simon Hebditch, of CAF, said that children would benefit enormously from coming together in groups to decide how to give away their money. “We also hope they will learn about how to raise and give away money for charity in a tax-efficient way,” he said. The CAF would try to get corporate donors and other big grant-making organisations to top up the school charity accounts, Mr Hebditch said.

“If they start with £500 seed corn from the Government and we raise matching funding from another donor and then the children go out and match that total, before you know it, the children could have a fund of £2,000 to distribute,” he said.

The scheme is likely to get off the ground in the next academic year and will be rolled out gradually. Ultimately it will be available to all 3,385 secondary schools in England.

Details of the scheme are still being worked out, although it is expected that CAF will run the school charity accounts as online bank accounts. The Home Office will also announce tomorrow that the giving nation curriculum, which teaches pupils about the voluntary sector and is currently available to secondary schools, will be rolled out to primary schools.

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