At a glance

Iconomix is an educational programme developed by the Swiss National Bank to promote economic and financial literacy at Swiss upper secondary schools. The aim is to strengthen the skills of young adults in Switzerland. To this end, Iconomix offers high-quality teaching units for use in economics and general studies classes. The main target group is teachers.

Around 1,800 upper secondary level
teachers actively use Iconomix resources
to teach economics and general studies.

Your benefits with Iconomix

Teach topically

Iconomix topics and content are relevant to everyday life and address current issues.

Engage students

Iconomix creates practice-oriented learning experiences full of playful and social interactions.

Adapt individually

Iconomix units can be flexibly adapted to individual lesson plans.

Ensure learning impact

All Iconomix content is grounded in economic theory, didactically sound and tested at schools.

Utilise practical experience

Iconomix is the most widely used supplementary resource for economics and general studies at upper secondary level.

Benefit for free

Students of education and teachers have free access to everything Iconomix offers.

Iconomix – the core values

The teaching units provided by Iconomix systematically promote economic literacy and equality of opportunity in Switzerland. To meet this overarching mission the programme is guided by clear values:

We are politically neutral, and act independently and consistently in the interests of teachers and students.

We develop the content of our educational programme on the basis of current facts validated by research.

We use methods and didactics designed to ensure successful, sustained and efficient learning.

We are open to dialogue and respect the diversity of people and opinions in Switzerland.

We work for innovative education that proactively harnesses the potential of digitalisation.

Reach and use

The relevant metric for measuring the reach of Iconomix is the number of active users. For this we count the number of teachers at upper secondary level who are registered at iconomix.ch and log onto the platform at least once in a calendar year.

In 2023, around 1,800 teachers at Swiss upper secondary schools made active use of the Iconomix web platform. In relation to the target group – teachers of economics and general studies at upper secondary schools – this translates into a reach of around 42%. All three main linguistic areas of Switzerland have a similarly positive showing in terms of usage and spread.

User map

The interactive user map shows schools and the number of users there who logged on at least once in 2023.
A total of 364 upper secondary schools are recorded on the map (as of 2023).

Further facts and figures

19

events were held in year 2023. Around 470 teachers used these as an opportunity to get to know us, deepen their own knowledge and give us feedback.

410

class sets with newspapers and game boxes were sent out.

97

teaching units were available at the end of 2023, divided into four languages: German, French, Italian and English.

2000

links to resources from third-party providers were available via the Iconomix web platform at the end of 2023.

753

registration applications were submitted in 2023 and reviewed by Iconomix; 647 of these were approved.

132 000

unique visits to the website were recorded in 2023.

«This type of sustained learning, with games and simulations, delivers lasting results.»

Financing and responsibility

Iconomix is 100% financed and supported by the Swiss National Bank (SNB). Its basic funding (covered by financial resources for third-party services) was limited in 2011 to CHF 0.7 million per year (approximately EUR 0.65 million). The staff numbers in this specialist unit comprise 6 permanent employees (equivalent to 3.6 full-time equivalents) and 2 interns.

This allocation of financial and human resources has proven to be sustainable over the years. Not included in the basic funding is the periodic relaunch of the web platform, which is necessary every four to five years. The last relaunch was in November 2021.

Iconomix seeks to maintain high standards of accountability, effectiveness and efficiency vis-à-vis its sponsor, the SNB. Some of its key figures are published regularly, both in the SNB’s annual Sustainability Report and on the Iconomix web platform (‘About us’).

2005 to today and beyond: The Iconomix story

2005

In November, the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank gives the go-ahead to set up an economic and financial literacy programme for upper secondary schools, thus following the example of other central banks. The launch of the programme is scheduled to coincide with the SNB’s centenary in 2007.

2007

The SNB unveils its new educational programme, Iconomix, on 31 October 2007. The initial teaching units include the word game Barter or Buy, the classroom experiment Pitgame, the learning game Fishpond, the browser simulation Mopos and the two real-time multi-player games Score More and Railgame.

2009

The first edition of the newsletter is published in early 2009. The first symposium, devoted to the financial crisis, takes place in September 2009 in German-speaking Switzerland (Berne). The first symposium in French-speaking Switzerland is held a year later in Lausanne.

2009 and 2010

The Iconomix Award is presented at the Westside in Berne. Upper secondary students are invited to submit their economics-related high school graduation, specialisation or project work. Each of the two award ceremonies is attended by more than 100 young people with their work. The award is discontinued in 2011.

2010

Iconomix begins to enhance units with topic-related links. A printed catalogue is published for the first time, initially in German and then a year later in French. A translation into Italian follows. 2010 also sees the launch of the first Iconomix newspaper, devoted to the topic of pay differences.

2012

The Iconomix educational programme celebrates its first five years with a new-look website for its users. All teaching units are grouped in a single teaching materials section and can be filtered according to criteria.

2014

A new section is added to the web platform: the Hub (today: Tools & Links). This gives teachers access to specially selected resources created outside the Iconomix team, including blogs, explanatory videos, infographics, glossaries and quizzes.

2015

A new category featuring content from external partners is introduced. These modules are subject to the Iconomix content guidelines but are created by, and the responsibility of, the respective external Iconomix partner. One of the first partners was Caritas Switzerland.

2017

Iconomix celebrates its 10th birthday. To mark the occasion, the website is relaunched. The focus of the relaunch is on personalisation and mobile-friendliness. The first steps are also taken to gradually replace the static PDFs by fillable PDF files.

2019

In summer a strategic partnership with nanoo.tv is announced. Autumn sees the launch of the fruit of this collaboration: the Videos section, a collection of didactically enhanced video topic blocks. The first unit produced originally in Italian is released: Contabilità nazionale.

2021

The Iconomix website is revised again, with the user interface being the main point of focus this time. The new design is lighter and brighter. An optimised colour and image concept rounds everything off.

2023

The Iconomix unit Swiss Economic History (only available in German) is awarded the prestigious Worlddidac Award 2023 at the Swissdidac Education Fair. This unit allows upper secondary school students to immerse themselves in Swiss economic history through multimedia case studies.

Further ahead

“In the course of the digital transformation, the demand for new didactic approaches and teaching ideas is increasing. Since there is no silver bullet, a lot of trial and error is called for. As a provider of supplementary teaching material, Iconomix will assume its responsibility and make its contribution. That is our commitment.”

Manuel Wälti, Head of Iconomix

A selection of our partners

Education always involves teamwork. Accordingly, Iconomix would like to thank the partners who help us create a modern teaching programme for economics and social studies at upper secondary level.