Free breakfast clubs for ALL primary school children? Why?

[Safi7]

I’ve been overseas since the election so a bit out of the loop, but is it true that Labour are going to make it standard that all primary schools must now offer free breakfasts to all children, regardless of need?

Fair enough for children from deprived families - but all children?

Where is the money for this coming from?

Are Labour actually saying that in 2024, its now to much to expect parents to actually bother to feed their own children breakfast? This responsibility can just be pushed onto schools instead - as if they haven’t got enough on? Teachers are leaving in droves as it is. Du much is out in them - the jobs is becoming more like social work in too many cases. Who will staff these breakfast clubs and make sure kids are actually eating?

Surely this is just encouraging lazy parenting - ie parents who can well afford cereal / toast / eggs etc it but just won’t bother if their kids can eat at school instead. Plus children will be dumped at school earlier than necessary, just because parents can now get away with it?

Surely it’s better to direct resources where they are actually needed, rather than turn schools into free cafes? Makes no sense.

Most school breakfast clubs where I live don’t actually supply food, it’s more wrap around childcare to enable people to get to work than having to wait the 8:30am gate opening (which most mornings is more like 8:35+).
I do have a concern though, I pay £3 a morning which over a month can add up to around £50. If you’re lucky there are two people working there (which they struggle to employ people as timings are rubbish for school wraparound care), even the TA’s / staff are too knackered want to do this additional shift and I can’t blame them, the salary is rubbish and that can be an 8am - 6pm hard shift on minimum wage. So they’re chronically understaffed, for free places the government will generally pay the school even less per child so the current staffing will have even more kids to look after so they will want to possibly leave.

Im not knocking the sentiment, for me the costs mount up even though I can pay, but as long as there are enough staff. My DC often says kids just run, scream and fall over and cry - yes kids do this but how it is explained I feel they need more staff. I’d rather pay a little more (fine for people that get it free at the same time) and get more staff.

Absolutely, the problem will be staffing. At the moment we have 1 TA willing to do breakfast club. The rest of us have been asked at one point or another and we will help out in an emergency but none of us want to commit to running it permanently. We can’t get anyone to fill TA roles at the moment , we have had the same role advertised 3 times now with no suitable applicants so there is little chance of getting someone to fill the breakfast club role unless it’s part of a TA role which no one wants to do either. Result will be that teachers will likely be coerced into stepping up to do it, meaning more overworked and pissed of teachers who will leave.

Meanwhile back in the real world … Not getting enough/anything to eat is about as nutritiously dangerous as it gets.

we are told there is a financial black hole. Only the very poorest pensioners will get help with fuel costs, tax rises are on the way. Throw in underfunded schools and hospitals. Yet there is money available for all children from the richest to poorest to be in school for a breakfast club that many already pay for and others don’t need or want. The benefits are marginal at best (making a softer start to school for those who find it hard - really?? That’s the priority?). There will be food and money wasted as despite posters saying don’t use it if you don’t like it, each child still needs to be accounted for. I already see milk left out to spoil and bags of carrots, tomatoes in the bins at my child’s school. The teachers take salad home for their pets.

What IS the cost? Who is prepping the food and looking after the kids? My child’s school can’t get lunch staff never mind someone to come in for half an hour, an hour in the morning for the entire school to have breakfast. Aren’t most schools eating in sittings? How does that work for breakfast?

what about alternative providers too who already do wrap around care? The child minders, the private nurseries, the pre-schools run by third parties on school sites? Suddenly their living is pinched.

what about secondary school kids? Are they not hungry too? Also vulnerable - wrap around is a cliff edge. I’ve paid for my child throughout primary and suddenly just after their 11th birthday they are meant to be ok to get themselves breakfast, lock the house up, get to the bus stop and get to school.

my big concern is that this is window dressing based on manipulating voters emotions. The only good thing I can see of this being universal is if this money goes straight to general school budget so it’s not wasted on those who don’t need or want it and it is available for teachers to use for those who do without having to dip into their own pocket.

Because the British school day is so short it makes work impossible? It doesn't need to wrap around at both ends but either the beginning or end need to be covered.
Asking employers to cater for 9.30 to 2.30 work days is bonkers. Might as well not work at all...

yes I do, it is an area I am vastly experienced in, which is more than can be said for many people here, clearly.

The thing is people who have no idea what they are talking about like to throw around the phrase "you have no idea" and similar, because they can't actually put forward any sort of coherent counter arguement.

Obesity and diabetes at crisis levels in young adults, bankrupting the NHS because of crap food like this

Coping and projecting much?
You've already blatantly lied on this thread once when you tried claiming the year 2s know who gets fsm, ALL kids get FSM until year 3 everyone who's worked in a school in the past five years knows this.
Like I've already said my child gets fsm and I book them online just like the parents who pay, there is quite literally no way the other children know.
And I stand by what I said it's bad practice if school stuff are coming into class asking for the free school meal kids in front of everyone else like you claim. 👌🏻Enjoy your day and try to spend it productively instead of telling white lies on Mumsnet

Could you elaborate a little on your concerns?

I'm picturing a situation where the club is compulsory in all but name. They cannot insist everyone should go to it, but they can treat everybody as if they go to it, and forget to make any provision for those who don't. Say about 10 children in the whole school don't use it. Some important information about a forthcoming trip is given out at the breakfast club, so those 10 children don't get the message and don't get the opportunity to go on the trip. Or the children do times tables practice at the club, meaning that anyone who doesn't go misses out on an extra opportunity to practise that skill, and might do less well in tests.

Posters keep making the point about ‘free child care.’
Why does that matter?
As a retired teacher of many years I have never understood how the government can provide school buildings, specialist labs, food tech rooms, gyms, sports halls, electricity, maintenance, cleaning, expensive text books plus huge staffing bills but they can’t provide at least one decent, free meal for each pupil.
A healthy breakfast and lunch for every pupil, regardless of their family’s financial situation would go a long way to producing healthy, happy children and would reduce the stress on working parents.
And making it a blanket provision would eliminate those means-tested ideas which always result in some needy people just missing out.

It is not the children’s fault that the aren’t given breakfast at home however this is a sticking plaster on bigger issues. Lack of money in the home- why? Lack of understanding of the importance of a balanced diet- why? And in SOME CASES poor parenting and poor budgeting.
I think there needs to be a balance between necessary state help and encouraging individual responsibility.

You’re definitely a Tory.

It would be lovely, but sadly what is provided is not healthy. And even if there is a healthy option, what children choose is not healthy either.

I see kids come into school, eat white toast, marge and jam and the breakfast club, then unpack £££s worth of sweets to eat at break time, then white pasta at lunch, probably with chips.

yes, I would love to have strictly enforced rules about what is offered. GENUINE wholemeal bread and butter, for a start, not white bread and marge- but the price will triple

(and I mean bread from genuinely whole meal flour - not highly refined white flour that has wholemeal bits retrospectively stirred in later.)

I would like to see margarine sales banned altogether - the one single most damaging food on out shelves - I would even put it on a par with alcohol, the metabolic damage it does, I do not consider it fit for human consumption

Banning margarine would go some way towards tackling obesity in the Uk

The govt (in my view) should be changing work cultures so that people with kids can start work slightly later or more flexibly. Change work practices and make that law. Why does the impact of everything always have to be on children, rather than employers?

Whilst I do see your point here, I think a lot of these children will not be getting up earlier, but just not going to a childminder first.

My Granddaughter is extremely Neurodivergent. My son is a single working father, and has never qualified for free school meals, or breakfast clubs, but struggled financially.

When my granddaughter was little she used to come in to me (as childminder) for 8 am, then half an hour later I would take her to school.

Being ND, she struggled with transitions, so it was too much to cope with being dropped off at me, then rushing to school 20 mins later and we often wouldn’t get in until 9.30/10 am and even then she may not have managed to get dressed.

So, in noticing this, the school suggested breakfast club, that way Dad could drop her off at school , to save the ‘transition’ of coming into me and then on to school.

He already had permission from his employer to start at 9 am, instead of 8 to accommodate his daughter.

Despite being a low income working single parent, DS didn’t qualify for help with costs,
My granddaughter found it easier to go straight to school, therefore her attendance got better.

Luckily, despite myself being on benefit at the time, I was able to help by feeding her in the evening when she came to me after school, which enabled my DS to just about be able to afford to pay for breakfast club.

This was nothing to do with ‘Lazy (grand)parenting’ this was a child who had some serious struggles in life. This helped with one of them.

Thanks. You’re right. UPF is muck masquerading as food. Subsidised healthy food could be done. Maybe the government could chase up the £35 BILLION a year lost in tax evasion… but that’s a whole new thread 🥲

I can't be the only one who grew up with white bread and cereal for breakfast and lived to tell the tale- I'm not saying it's perfect and ideally we would all be giving kids poached eggs or porridge and wholemeal toast and Greek yoghurt and berries etc - but it's got to be better than nothing or a bag of crisps or 2 biscuits etc - and at least it's fortified with vitamins. It's not compulsory , it's an option

I know what you’re saying and I sympathise to some extent but it’s a bit like saying that one slap across the face is better than two. No slaps is best.

We need to use breakfast club because of our working hours. It becoming free sounds good to me! We don't use it on the days we don't need to. Would we if it was free? Not sure. Would probably depend on what DD would prefer. She likes breakfast club

I don't think white bread and cereal is a slap across the face.

i struggle to understand why a parent cannot give a bowl of weetabix, porridge, bread and ham. bread and cheese, bread and jam, boiled eggs, fried/scrambled eggs, bacon on toast, reheated dinner. Liking breakfast club is not a reason to have it. When you need to get to work early the kids have an early breakfast.

I agree but some parents just don’t and their children have to be catered for. I seem to be posting a lot on this thread. I do get on my high horse about school dinners!
I don’t see why this country can’t feed all its children.
i know that parents should be responsible and care for their children properly but some don’t or can’t. Children have no power or control of their situation so they must be looked after.

Imagine it's winter, getting up at 6am is very hard. And now you live a whole from the school and it takes time to get there, so you have to leave early. And you have a job that means you have to get there in person, at a set time, like nursing. Of course people have to use breakfast club.

I used to have use it so I get from the suburbs to central London for 9am lectures. Two children, just me. How do people fail to understand that?

Same with affording food. Unfortunately housing costs are extreme, it can take up your entire salary in a one parent household.

School staff knows because schools have educational outcome tracking/targets for children in receipt of pupil premium, just as they do for children on the SN register. Discounts are also often offered for school trips, music lessons, etc if their extra funds aren't being spent elsewhere.

You have never seen what poverty and poor mental health looks like, have you.

easy from the other side of the track to talk about fried bacon for breakfast on a school morning.

What are the solutions then?

no breakfast = hunger = can’t concentrate and poor behaviour

or

boiled eggs for breakfast at school??

let’s get some avocado going at the same time shall we?

no let’s go a step further and turn all state primaries into gourmet Michelin starred restaurants.

kids have good blood sugar control.

let them eat white bread. At least it’s something rather than nothing.