To think breakfast club should offer more than item?

[Ellieboolou27]

DD 4 has started reception, I booked her in breakfast club.

They offer either toast (with jam/marmalade) orcereal.
The cereal is multi grain shapes, weetabix, cookie crisp, chocolate boulders, Frosties.
I'm not too impressed by choices of cereal but hey ho, however my dd asked for toast and cereal and they said it's either / or!

Now, I'm not a fuss pot helicopter mum by any means, however I was a bit miffed as it seems quite poor.
My mum runs a breakfast and after school club, she's been doing it for 18 years and she agreed with me that this was poor offerings.

So, would I BU to take it up with the school? They are a "healthy eating" accredited school btw.
My mums clubs offer, fruit, yoghurt, cereal and toast, cereals such as porridge, fruit n fibre, etc, kids also get 2 or 3 choices.

[asdfghjjkl]

granddaughter goes to breakfast club at pre school she's 3 has cereal and toast and cup milk, she often has a bit of cereal and a banana and strawberries before she goes as well if she wakes early

[Duckafuck]

Calling a 4 year old greedy for being hungry is pretty low imo.

[LyndaLaHughes]

I'm not disputing that schools should try to ensure options are healthy but honesty I am staggered by the number of comments about cost or the insinuation that £4 a day is pricey - people need to get real.

[Magstermay]

I don't think you can say cereal and toast is greedy, especially for a 4 year old!!

It really isn't that expensive to buy a loaf of bread - I don't see why they couldn't have half a slice of toast in addition to cereal. There's a lot being made of breakfast being important for children, so the school should make sure they get it! I wouldn't be happy about something like Frosties, it's just a massive sugar high with a crash just as lessons are getting going.

[Ditsy4]

Our breakfast club serves cereal- weetabix, rice crispies, puffed wheat.
Toast- honey or jam
Juice- orange or Apple
Children can have whatever they want. Two bowls of cereal and two rounds of toast if they want.
It is free.
It is run by volunteers. Staff and parents. It is offered because otherwise some of our children wouldn't get anything. We encourage them to come and they are ready to learn.

[ChatEnOeuf]

Ours is £1.20 and serves a different cereal each day of the week (never a sugary option from what DD says, but she won't eat those even if on offer, and she's 5 and vague about these things). You can then have (brown or white) toast, or a pastry on Friday :) Milk, juice and water available throughout. No fruit, but they have fruit/veg snacks at morning and afternoon break, as well as at after-school care, so I'm not bothered by that. It's a small school and relatively few of the kids attend for breakfast (if you arrive after 8:15 it's gone), so I'm not bothered by the lack of choice each day.

[HexBramble]

Our school breakfast club is free but I often feed DC before they go! 1 slice of toast won't fill mine up.

[WankersHacksandThieves]

It's been a while since mine went but they used to have breakfast before they went though the breakfast club had a good offering - which they had as well. It was in a school where a lot of children had free school meals and got a free breakfast so the staff made sure it was substantial for them.

They offered toast with various toppings, 3 or 4 cereals including porridge. Yoghurt, fruit, fruit juice, cartons of milk and in poor weather, hot chocolate or tea.

[imother]

It wouldn't be hard to boil some eggs and take them to a bc. Even if the bc is in a classroom you could offer:

boiled egg, pieces of cheese, slices of tomato/cucumber, nuts, fruit,

• as well as the good cereals (which are only weetabix, shreddies and porridge, all the rest have added sugar eg Frosties is 1/3 sugar)
  
  I can't understand a school allowing a bc on their premises with no interest or responsibility taken for the quality of care being offered.

[bumsexatthebingo]

Weetabix and Shreddies have added sugar. The only ones I've found that don't are porridge, Shredded Wheat and Raisin Wheats (although shops own brand ones tend to have added sugar).

[MrsGsnow18]

Apart from the very sugary cereals, I actually just can't believe it's £4 a day!
My school ( I work there) runs a breakfast club which is either £1.50 a day or £5 for the whole week! They have healthy cereal choices or toast ( white or brown) and on two days a week there are hot breakfast choices with either eggs and toast or ham/cheese/tomatoes on toast. They also have juice or milk to drink and every child can have a piece of fruit.
They also do activities after breakfast like games and crafts.

[sandbagsatdawn]

Haven't read the thread but toast and cereal doesn't seem unreasonable for a growing child, kids go through phases of being hungry (probably growth spurts) and less hungry. I would be more concerned though at the lack of healthy options. I would expect fruit to be offered and would even be happy with a system where they could only have a second "main" breakfast option if they had had some fruit first.

My kids, aged 6, 8 and 10 have had the same breakfast for years, cereal and fruit followed by second bowl of cereal or toast or muffin if they are hungry. None of them are remotely overweight.

[sandbagsatdawn]

Also it's not like toast is exactly expensive. You can buy a cheap loaf of sliced bread for 45p. I know you are paying for the childcare really not the food but still.

[HeCantBeSerious]

Our school lunches cost £2.50 per day. 80% of that goes on staff leaving just 50p for the actual food. And that's with the vast majority of children having paid for lunches.

The same model gives 80p of the £4 for the actual food, but it's possible that staff costs are a higher proportion of the cost if there are fewer children attending.

[expatinscotland]

And I can't believe people are bitching that £4/hour for childcare + food is expensive, especially when there was a recent thread on here about paying babysitters more. I'm sure the DM is on this case, however.

[Nanny0gg]

If the OP's DC want cereal and toast for breakfast, maybe they're hungry?

One of my DGC would eat that (and more) because she doesn't like the usual offerings for lunch and fills up at breakfast then might have fruit for elevenses and a snack in the afternoon before eating a good dinner.

We are not all the same!

[24balloons]

My 2 attended the school breakfast club approx 6 years ago. It was run for profit and cost £6 each! It didn't open until 8am so this was for less than an hour. Ds2 stopped eating breakfast as the choice & quality was so bad they had no fresh juice just squash. I ended up getting them to eat at home before they went.

Luckily they only went for a few months as I changed jobs. The same club charged £15 for after school until 6pm & the food options were value products!

[Rosti1981]

My 5 year old eats a bowl of fruit, bowl of cereal (cornflakes, sometimes porridge) and egg/toast most mornings. My 2 year old usually just has the bowl of fruit and either muesli with Greek yogurt or an egg, but no I don't think that sounds like enough for many children.

[LyndaLaHughes]

I'd just like to make another point about running costs. What about the time spent ordering the food or physically going to a shop and buying it? Calculating the amounts required etc. This then also has to be recorded and done in a way to meet strict financial requirements. What about the time spent tracking and chasing payments from parents and the admin involved? What about the cost of the food hygiene courses etc that staff strictly speaking should have in place? What about the time spent ensuring people have receipts etc as this is now also a requirement for financial standards schools must meet. This all incurs a staff cost. The list is endless. Schools that can run them very cheaply usually receive funding to do so or else take that money from other areas of the budget. I don't know of any school that runs a breakfast club for profit - quite the opposite. As I've previously said I don't dispute a criticism of the menu as that is fair enough but this insinuation that schools are ripping people off or that £4 is too much- honestly what planet are we living on? I'd love to know where else you can get your child looked after for an hour and fed for £4 and not consider it an utter bargain. People want things for nothing these days.

[JeSuisUnChocoholic]

At DS' primary they have either 2 slices of toast or cereal with milk. They have toast on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and cereal on Wednesday and Friday.
Choices are:
Toast:
Just butter
Strawberry jam
Mixed fruit jam
Lemon curd
Marmalade
Cereal:
Weetabix
Rice Krispies
Cheerios
Shreddies
Porridge with golden syrup

I suppose the difference is that they can come back for seconds. Our breakfast club relies on food donations from parents and volunteers.

[JeSuisUnChocoholic]

It's free by the way.

[24balloons]

LyndaLaHughes the breakfast club my sons attended was privately run on the school premises. There were about 3 staff & a lot of children. I used to sometimes see the staff shopping in Tesco buying the cheapest value ham & bread for the afternoon club. It was definitely run as a profitable business.

[LyndaLaHughes]

24balloons Can I ask what the charge was? I ask because I was referring to schools not making profits not private organisations. I presume the uptake of children was very high was it as it's virtually impossible to make money in this way unless that is the case. I'm intrigued as to how they managed it!

[24balloons]

Breakfast club £6/child for half an hour 8-8.30 then the kids went into the playground. Probably at least 20 kids X £6, 3 staff. More kids after school £15 as a one off no matter how long the kids stayed, open until 6. If regularly booked it dropped to £10. This was 6 years ago so don't know how much they charge now. They also took nursery kids before the pm session & nursery kids after the am session, not sure how much that was, think it was around £20/session.
They definitely didn't spend much on food.

[LyndaLaHughes]

That's absolutely extortionate and that was six years ago? My goodness no wonder they were making money- how on earth did they get parents to pay it? Needless to say that is absolutely not the norm. But just proves the point of how cheaply most schools are doing things and how much needs to be charged to make any money out of it. Schools are not ripping people off - private companies are a different matter which is why academisation should be so frightening to parents- but that's a whole other thread!