The aim of this research is to explore whether teaching basic financial concepts at schools helps to improve students' ability to apply the knowledge and skills that they learn to real-life situations involving financial issues and decision making measured by a standardized financial literacy assessment. To do this, we exploit the rich set of comparative data about the countries participating in the PISA 2012 financial literacy module. Our empirical analysis is based on multilevel (hierarchical) regression modeling including country fixed effects. Our results suggest that the availability of financial education is positively and significantly related to students' financial literacy, regardless of the strategy applied to teach financial concepts. Nevertheless, it has a very small influence compared to the major role played by other individual- and school-level factors. In addition, we find that students receiving courses taught by specialists from private institutions and non-governmental organizations achieve better results than others receiving financial education training from their teachers.