To think that funding free breakfast clubs is wrong-headed?

Wow, I'm shocked at this. I wouldn't dream of sending my kids to school without having had breakfast.

Teaching for a while in a low decile secondary school, I did one of the dreaded morning duties - rounding up the kids in the local ice cream shop where they were buying their breakfast. No wonder there was such an obesity issue. Poor little buggers.

As per usual, government doesn’t ask schools if this is what is needed or is this the best use of peoples’ taxes (Governments never do!). I worked in school in a quite affluent area when free school meals for FS/KS1 was introduced. So the children of doctors, solicitors, teachers, managers were all getting free lunches paid for by UK taxpayer (mind you, it was also parents’ taxes paying for it!). Now, breakfast clubs are being introduced. These will be used by working parents as free-childcare (and, again, why not, it’s their taxes paying for it) but what about the pre-school clubs and childminders children went to before…all out of a job.
Also, the few families in my school who really needed breakfast (the children who the staff would be making toast and drinks for every morning, as many schools have done so for years) will these children be enjoying breakfast? The answer is NO because their parent/s can never get out of bed to make sure they are in school on time (let alone feed them). The families who race up the school drive in taxis every morning. (Even when they only lived 10 mins walk from school.) Always used to amaze me how these families never had any money but could afford taxis when most of us teachers couldn’t.

I disagree. As others have mentioned, admin wise it's clear and as such is probably no more expensive as targeted. Hungry kids don't learn, so educationally for them it matters but also for the class for eg if 4 children are unfocussed staring out of the window or nodding off it slows the flow of learning for the class in general...and as it's such an easy fix (unlike other things) it seems like a no brainer to me.

I know that. I was teaching for decades and saw it first hand. However there are some parents who don't put their children first. It's obviously a priority to protect them. I just know that many, many parents can afford to and do give their children breakfast and it doesn't seem a good use of money for the government to be feeding them.

Society benefits from children who can concentrate in class and are well nourished. A free breakfast seems like a small investment with very good returns… in the moment for all the children being educated together and in the long term benefits of a better educated workforce, improved health and reduced stress on health services.

There are plenty of other ways that society will inflict inequality on children from the get-go.

I think at most other points in history, though (and perhaps in other countries besides the UK), it wouldn’t be socially acceptable to say “oh but life is so stressful that we should be helping out parents by taking away the job of feeding their kids so that they’ve got less to do”.

I keep animals and if I don’t feed them, it’s considered abuse and the animal gets removed from my care. And that’s an animal! With human beings, if their caregivers don’t feed them we go “oh but it’s very stressful and sometimes they can’t cope, we mustn’t shame them, the government needs to step in instead”.

That’s wild to me, and kind of what I mean when I say that we’ve sent a message to parents about who is responsible.

I accept that public money needs to be spent on kids who aren’t getting fed by their parents, but I’m a bit boggled at the suggestion that it should be spent on feeding kids who would get fed but whose parents would prefer that that job was ticked off the to do list by someone else.

This

It is really unfortunate we have to resort to feeding children breakfast at school as it enables feckless parents.

Having children is not a coat free decision but id we have the state again and again stepping in when parents forgo their parental responsibility we only go in one direction.

People need phones because everything is done via internet these days including messaging from schools. If parents started ditching their phones schools would have to go back to the old ways of contacting parents like letters.
And if a parent had to be contacted about a sick child but was working in a low paid job and had no phone do you think employers would be happy to keep taking these calls. "hello its school here. Can you tell Mrs Smith that Timmy is ill and she needs to come pick him up" ad infinitum.
If you want ppl to start ditching their phones then we need to stop doing eveything via internet and start doing everything by letter again.

@MounjaroOnMyMind a lot of struggling parents are struggling because they are working long hours or two jobs or making long expensive commutes to make ends meet but don’t earn enough to cover rent, childcare and other bills… the cost of living is making life extremely hard for many people.

And there have always been parents who've prioritised their own desires over their children's needs. Yes, the children need protecting - no doubt about that - but providing free food for children whose parents are able and willing to feed their children isn't the way to go about things.

@fitzwilliamdarcy there have always been parents who struggle to cope. It isn’t a malaise unique to the uk or of the current times.

Many people who are just about coping but would never let their kids go hungry would also benefit from having one less meal to organise and budget for… and I’m in favour so long as it’s good, healthy food and not sugary cereals or toast made with nutrition-free bread.

I am concerned that in this country we’ve ‘taught’ parents that their children are someone else’s responsibility and that if they want to have them and not feed, clothe or teach them anything then that’s their right.

And as someone born to useless, abusive, neglectful parents it makes my blood boil that someone can just produce a human being and not feed it, and the UK’s response will always be: what should schools do about it?

But I think we have a moral duty to protect these kids from their own parents. So I’m in favour of anything which feeds kids whose parents are too fucking crap or selfish to do it. It needs to be funded properly, though, or there’s no point. And I’d be happy for my taxes to go up to pay for it.

If you had read my previous posts you would see that I'd already said this was a concern of mine over my current provider as it's an external company that pay to use school facilities. Mine uses the hall and there are no other rooms available for them to use. The club is full and has a waiting list for new children so there would be no room within it for extra children, free or paid.

Yes, a childminder could refuse (and deal with the fallout). Incidentally, mine is closing shop soon because government initiatives such as this and the "free" (underfunded) childcare have made her job completely unviable - she is just seeing my child and others in their year through until they have completed Y6.

But the private provider which uses the school hall to provide the current wraparound care from 7.30 does... what exactly? Move to a different room for the half hour? Allow all the children to mingle, but some are paid for and some aren't? Only run the club for the first half an hour?

Or, more likely, close the club completely and therefore leave parents who currently use it for the extra hour before school to scramble for the already scarce childcare places elsewhere?

I agree, resinstating sure start and children's centres would be a better first step.

It's not an hour of free childcare - the proposal is 30 minutes.
The government have high hopes for the scheme, which will be informed by experience of the first 750 schools who start in April to offer the free breakfast clubs.

An aspect for working mothers (or would-be working mothers) is that if your job is supervising the breakfast club, you may require care for dc who don't attend the same school. I am sure this and other snags will be addressed after the initial tranche.

www.gov.uk/government/news/first-schools-confirmed-for-landmark-free-breakfast-clubs

The school based one will currently be limited on numbers though due to staff. If they choose to offer the free 30 minutes it doesn't mean they can increase numbers from 07:30 so people using earlier drop off providers will still probably choose to use them as they can't suddenly change heir working hours to allow for an 08:20 drop off. Private childcare providers would be well within their rights to say they are unwilling to do the school drop offs for the children in their care earlier than the official school start time.

@JasperTheDoll
My childminder charges me £5.50 per hour. Take half an hour off that at £2.75. Over a school year of 190 days, that's a loss of income of £522.50 per child. She is in charge of 5 school age children, so could lose £2,612.50.

The school-based provider opens at 7.30am - an hour before children are allowed on site. They charge £7 per child. 20 children attend, so if they lose half an hour per child for the free offer, they lose £3.50 x 190 x 20 = £13,300 a year. That's assuming they believe it is still viable to prepare and set up for a mere half an hour.

As I said above, economics of scale. It makes a difference.

And of course parents will take up an offer of free childcare. They will expect the children to be looked after until free childcare starts.

I don't think any childcare providers who offer drop offs from 07:00/07:30 will be affected by this. Is working parents still need childcare at that time to enable us to get to work on time so I can't see many if any taking up the offer of a free 30 minutes from 8:20.

I think far too many read too much Daily Mail on here.

The ones it doesn't help are childminders, private companies and nurseries which offer wraparound care and which are all set to lose their businesses.

Or the schools, which are given insufficient funding and time to make an idea happen which, as I already pointed out, will require lots of extra money and lots of extra staffing, and the surrounding admin.

Or the secondary schools where there is little realistic need for wraparound care, but which are still going to face the same costs.

Or the parents who need help in raising their children properly, and not another excuse to palm that responsibility off on someone else.

The proportion of children in genuine poverty due to a lack of household money is small - a much larger proportion that don't get fed miss out because of poor budgeting decisions or sheer fecklessness, where other help is needed, but that should not be a school's responsibility. This is where the money would be better spent on expanding social services and reinstating Surestart.

I thought this was more about childcare rather than feeding children? Isn’t the aim eventually for schools to provide free wrap around care both ends of the day in line with private nurseries so parents can work more easily? Most schools do breakfast clubs anyway and the children in our area that are on pupil premium can attend for free so the only thing it is doing in my area is making it cheaper and easier for working parents as well. I have no issue with it, many working parents are struggling to make ends meet and one parent is often left only being able to do a part time job because the school hours don’t aline with most jobs or professions. I think it’s a positive as it helps both working parents and the children that would otherwise not have breakfast at home.

Maybe it’s to enable parents to widen job availability to be able to start work earlier, especially those on minimum wage where it’s not financially viable to pay for breakfast club?

What’s wrong with an hour of free childcare. A lot people (especially women), struggle with work when children are in school as it’s not as flexible as childcare. It’s a small % who are earning enough to afford flexible childcare. Breakfast is relatively cheap, gets children to school on time, the children can have a proper breakfast and socialise with their peers in a relaxed way, rather than the rush to get breakfast and out the door in the mornings.