Play show me the money

You’ll need

A4 paper
Pens or pencils

Before you begin

Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Planning and setting up this activity

You may wish to write out the categories or areas for spending onto a piece of paper for each group to use or refer to. The categories are: Housing, Social Care, Industry Agriculture, Police, Transport, Defence, Debt Interest, Education, Health, and Welfare (Pensions and Benefits)

Running this activity

Gather everyone together and ask people what they would spend £100 on if they had it. You could choose a few people who are happy to share their answers.
Ask everyone to get into smaller teams and give each team pens and paper. Explain that they’ve to imagine the UK budget was £100. They're ow in charge of the spending it. Out of the £100, how much money would you choose to spend on the following things:
- - Housing
  - Social Care
  - Industry Agriculture
  - Police
  - Transport
  - Defence
  - Debt Interest
  - Education
  - Health
  - Welfare (Pensions and benefits)
They should divide and cut the paper into these categories. The bigger the piece of paper is, the more money it represents. For example, half the paper would represent £50. The group should label each piece of paper as to what it represents, such as Housing, then put it back to an A4 shape.
Once everyone has completed the task, ask everyone to reflect on their spending and see if there’s anything they’d change. You could ask people to move round each group’s work and see how they all compare.
Ask everyone to gather back to together and compare the decisions they all made. What are the differences? Did people spend on certain areas and why? What did each group choose to spend the most on? And what did they each choose to spend the least on, and why? After listening to each other, would any group change their decisions or spend more on certain areas?
Now, find out how it compares to how the government is spending money and ask someone to read out the following government spending. If the current government budget was based on £100, the breakdown would be:
- - £3.00 Housing
  - £4.00 Social Care
  - £4.00 Industry Agriculture
  - £4.00 Police
  - £4.00 Other
  - £5.00 Transport
  - £5.90 Defence
  - £9.90 Debt Interest
  - £10.90 Education
  - £20.80 Health
  - £28.70Welfare (Pensions and benefits)
After listening to the budget, how well does the group’s choices match the current government spending? What do people think about it? Do they think if more or less should be spent in certain areas? Does this reflect priorities and what do they see as being most important? What else do you think the government should spend money on that isn’t on this list?

Reflection

This activity was all about budgets and government spending. How did Is there anything that surprises you? Is there anything that you would like to see that isn’t included? What would you change if you could?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Active games: The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.