The Growing Importance Of The Breakfast club.

There has been as many as 20,000 breakfast clubs nationwide, your children or some that you know may take part in a school breakfast club because of work commitments and the need to drop your children off a little earlier than the average 9am.

But according to head teachers across the country the growing need for the breakfast club is becoming largely to provide a breakfast for children who come to school hungry. Head teacher Louise Nicholls of Kingsmead Primary school in Hackney, London, told The Observer that only about a third of the pupils that come to her school’s breakfast club are there because of their parents working hours. The rest were there because they either got themselves up and out to school or that, because of cuts to benefits, their parents simply couldn’t afford food.

The Guardian Teacher Network found that 83% of teachers who replied to their survey said that they had seen evidence of hungry children arriving at school in the morning, which has an effect on their learning.  41% thought that the increase in hunger was due to benefit cut causing families to cut back on food and 58% blamed poor family health and social skills.

These results come at a worrying time as many schools prepare to close breakfast clubs because stretched budgets can no longer permit them to continue.  According to requests made by Labour MP Sharon Hodgson under the freedom of information law local authorities are seeing the number of breakfast clubs decreasing, while MagicBreakfast, a charity that support around 200 breakfast clubs throughout the UK, has stated that they have had an increase in the number of inquiries from schools for help with funding to keep their breakfast clubs open.

A 2008 study by the School Food Trust tells of how hungry children have difficulties learning and often have erratic behaviour, but with the introduction of a breakfast club punctuality and performance increased, initially proving the benefits of school breakfast clubs, while needing a larger scale report.

At present Wirral schools charge for using the service of breakfast clubs and although this may help to keep them running during a gloomy economic outlook, it does also mean that poorer families will be deterred from sending their children to a breakfast club, despite studies showing that the poorer children in the community are the ones who benefit most from breakfast clubs. 

Wirral Borough Council are unlikely to follow in the footsteps of Wales (despite the 2002 Every Child Matters report), who have made breakfast clubs a priority, resulting in 75% of primary schools offering free breakfast clubs that have improved attendance and concentration. Last week the council announced another round of cuts costing £100m in order to help ease their increasing overspends. So for the foreseeable future the empty breakfast bowls of the needy children will have to be washed at home.