To think that free breakfast at school is a bad idea due to the quality?

We could do with funding school dinners, education, SEND, assessments, teachers and TA wages, buildings, security, safeguarding alongside that too but no one cares. The minute teachers try and push for better funding people call them lazy, greedy etc. No one seems to care enough to want things funded.

The school isn’t the problem. Honestly what a sanctimonious post that shows no understanding of the constraints of staffing, the pace of the curriculum the government set and the size of classes. Schools try their best. I love to do food preparation with my class but it’s increasingly impossible.

What do I do with 34 children while I run a bowl of washing up water and carry it to the hall?
What do 33 children do while one child washes up?
What do 34 children do while I mop the floor after said washing up?
What lesson should I not teach every day while this is happening?
Blame the government for funding levels and curriculum expectations, not the schools for having to adhere to it.

I love the idea of 15 and 16 year olds practicing their motor skills when the maths teacher really wants them to do a bit of GCSE preparation.

I had to get out or I would've have made it to the summer. My mum cried when I handed in my notice. She said she was that worried she would get a knock at the door.

I completely agree with all you are saying. Schools can do nothing correct these days. Staff put their health and families on the line and get shat on from all angles. I hope you manage to get out soon. I would just hand your notice in and go for something like home tutoring companies to keep the wolf from the door until you find something permanent.

Interesting. Our German students (at local sixth form college so for whole academic year) went for healthy choices pretty much every time. Honestly, if I offered something with chips or home made root veg soup and bread they went for soup each time. These were city kids, too. They were seriously into pudding, though 😁

You do that with 200 kids in 30 minutes?

How many children, what's the ratio of adults to children?

Agreed. But it’s like people who donate cr@p used threadbare clothes (including underwear) to homeless or refugees - oh anything is better than nothing! I’ve seen it time and again. All people deserve good healthy food and we should fund breakfast clubs properly to provide for it.

School haven’t got time to be making toast and buttering bread, it’s a pre wrapped brioche roll or a pre wrapped soreen with a carton on milk, a piece of fruit on the side. Our school is in a deprived area si we have had breakfast provided for over 10years .Honestly teachers don’t have the time to be pouring milk and washing bowls

Your school is part of the problem. You have this opportunity to show these children that pre-wrapped food is a bad choice but porridge, milk, overnight oats, Greek yoghurt and berries and nuts are a good choice. At my preschool children practise their motor skills by pouring their milk and buttering and cutting wholemeal toast and washing up their crockery and cutlery. Primary school children should be able to do this.

It also gives us an opportunity to talk to 3 & 4 year olds about healthy choices - vitamins, protein, fibre and hygiene.

Why are people so obsessed with porridge. I'm healthy, in my 70s and never eat porridge. There are plenty of other healthy alternatives.

As for the it's so much better in France well when we had French exchange students all they wanted was pain au Chocolat for breakfast and chips for dinner. No idea what school managed to get them to eat for lunch. The father of one girl phoned to ask how she was and I said I was worried about her not eating and he said don't worry she's the same at home.

:(. It’s awful honestly! If I had any in-cling that this was going to be my life 20 years ago the nearly 40 year old me would have told the 18 year old me to stay the hell out of education! I almost failed my first year of teacher training and should have seen the signs then.
I have a great career now, but the increasing social deprivation in schools and gap between those who can provide tutors and so on in leafy suburb schools is massively growing. Meanwhile as well as providing all the extra little things that we do at cost to our pockets, families, mental health, families mental health and so on, we get our knuckles wrapped for not getting good enough data year on year!

I will add in here that this week I’ve had a lot of horrible things going on in my life, I have barely managed to hold it together, so god forbid that we actually manage to have a life on top of everything else we do!

I’m jealous you’re getting out! I’ve tried multiple times to hint to my fiancé I want out. He just tells me to move schools! Honestly my school is not the problem :(

I wasn't on about them not eating it. I was on about them not coming to the club. You have to provide food each morning for a whole school no matter if only 2 or 3 turn up. Then 200 portions of food need throwing out. Or you buy in fresh food and it gets wasted.

My issue is how do you logistically manage and prevent the food waste of 190 portions per day if the kids do not show up? Or show up and do not want food and it all has to be ready to serve 200 portions within 30 minutes so you cannot not prepare it beforehand.

Also say they do all come in and eat - how do you wash up 200 porridge bowls in 5 minutes? That is another thing that hasn't been figured out yet!

The highly motivated kids who don't have homes with quiet study space or have parents who work nights and aren't around at breakfast time DO love it. It offers time, space, support and sustenance for those that need it. But yes, I admit it sounds a bit Dickensian...

We don’t need to set such a low bar. We can provide good quality nutrition AND give schools the budget for it. We will reap the benefit many times over in the health, well being and achievement of our children.

We need to ask ourselves why kids aren’t eating the porridge. Why are the vast majority of them eating cheap white bread and processed cereal for breakfast? Why aren’t parents giving their children nutritious food to help them grow and develop? Why is bread and jam a regular breakfast for kids and porridge isn’t?

It’s a long time since my kids were weaned, but they had baby porridge pretty early on. I’m sure parents these days aren’t weaning their babies on coco pops, so at what point do we stop offering the baby porridge and move on to processed cereal?

Of course we all have preferences and likes and dislikes, but surely porridge should be as much of a store cupboard staple in a house as pasta and rice?

Two of mine would eat it and two would rather have gone hungry. I confess I can't eat it, I like crunchy food so a bowl of cornflakes or shreddies, skimmed milk and fruit chopped up on top, maybe some nuts as well.

When I helped with the Christmas lunch I couldn't believe how many lovely roast potatoes ended up in the bin, it was over 50% and I love a roastie.

I've seen lots of different schools and what they offer, which have all been a good variety of nutritious options. The thing is most kids do go for the bacon butties, waffles, as at lunch time, the pizzas and burgers go quickly. So much healthier food is left, piles of fruit and salad on the otherwise bare shelves.

At primary my DC preferred the white toast to fruit or cereal, like many of the other pupils, so there was a lot of it!

Our school has a staff room a long way from the hall where the breakfast club takes place. The funding would not stretch to a staff member being out of ratio and in the staff room warming porridge in the microwave.

The washing up for porridge is much greater than for toast as well. All of these things matter when working on such tight shoe string budgets as schools are.

I agree that cereal could be low sugar but don’t just assume schools can provide porridge.

This is the reality of school life. We have no money for pritt sticks for example and I’m tired of buying them so we just don’t do cutting and sticking.

But it’s far from an ideal world

This is absolute rubbish and clearly you don’t know how a Trust works. I’m a governor and parents are so misinformed about Trusts. The issue is years of underfunding. Most schools are far worse off before they join a Trust, but all budgets are getting tighter each year.

I suppose it's a question of time for than anything else but porridge can be done in a microwave easily enough and most children like it. They could have a banana with it and some yogurt.

I completely understand that, but there are always other options. Shredded wheat or weetabix are far better than Rice Krispies for example. And I realise a lot of kids won’t eat them, but overnight oats are an option for parents short of time in the mornings.

As I’ve said before, school breakfasts are the very tip of the iceberg. As a nation we need to go back to basics and relearn what nutrition is and what our bodies need. And as parents we need to stop feeding our kids such appalling quality food. If kids were being bought up eating nutritious food at home, they wouldn’t be refusing the healthier options at school.

In an ideal world, schools wouldn’t be under the extra pressure of providing breakfast. That should be a parents job.

I'm a primary school teacher.

I never eat school dinners. Yes, there is a salad bar and fruit available but the main meals are not good quality or nutritious and the packed lunches are dreadful.

But that's not the fault of the schools themselves. The financial situation is dire.

Our grandson’s school makes meals from scratch every day. Two week rotation. Pizza, made in the kitchen, once each fortnight. Chips on offer on Friday with fish and peas. State primary, NW coast.

Haven’t read the whole thread as it’s long but just wanted to say I agree with the OP. My three have to go to breakfast club twice a week and the breakfasts on offer are very low quality. White toast with jam, choc filled cereal, weetabix (better, but none of the kids want it as the alternatives are yummier). Would love to see some porridge w/ toppings, yoghurt, fruit in there. Even hard boiled eggs would be easy and cheap.

don’t get me started on the school dinners available. Iast term I put my kids onto packed lunches as there was so much processed crap in there. Last thing I really want to do each morning is make three packed lunches but they come in about £1 cheaper per day than the £2.70 cost of the school hot lunches so winning there as well as nutrition-wise.

the food (and attitude towards healthy eating) I saw at French state schools when I
exchanges in the 90s was a whole other world away. Depressing that the U.K. can’t prioritise kids health and offer the same so that healthy eating is normalised