Finance, ethics, and a work ethic are skills Canada’s business leaders value and would like to see more students learn. When students return to class this week Canada’s business leaders would like primary or secondary students taught budgeting, business ethics, and how to read financial statements. To succeed in business, respondents say schools need to do a better job teaching the basics, finance, business and accounting, a work ethic or self discipline. To succeed in life, according to respondents, schools should also teach students more self discipline and personal finance, ethics and social skills. Notably, teaching students how to invest in the stock market is not a priority.

Business leaders say the skills they learned in school that have been most useful in their professional lives are writing, work ethic, how to get along with other students and math, in that order.

These are the key findings from the weekly on-line survey of CEOs and business leaders for publication in the Nationals Post conducted under the sponsorship of BDO Dunwoody and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.