To wonder what will happen about the government's 'free' breakfast club proposal?!

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They have been talking a lot today about saving families £450 a year, but I just can't see how this is going to work?

They are paying 60p per child per day, which might pay for a Weetabix and a bit of toast, but doesn't take into account the staffing (and any energy costs) that this will require!

We already have a small school with a successful breakfast club running, with smallish numbers but all can sit down and eat together. Parents pay a reasonable amount for it and this pays for 1/2 members of staff, depending on numbers. If this was opened up to all parents as a free option, we simply wouldn't have enough space to put everyone in the hall-it would be mayhem.

The school budget doesn't have any spare cash in it for TA staffing costs (normally paid for by parents paying) so where are schools expected to find this money from?

The cost to school is next to nothing.

Our TAs (the few we have) are only contracted when the children are in, so to pay them from 8/8.15 would cost money. I suspect you have bigger rooms in a secondary and would need a lower ratio of adults to staff a breakfast club than we would in EYFS/KS1 as well.

I'm not being negative but this would incur staffing costs that we don't currently have.

My fear is that the parents who already pay for wraparound care in breakfast club (ours is from 7.30-9) will be asked to pay more to subsidize the "free" half hour breakfast club for everyone else under the new scheme.
I haven't read into the new trial and so some of these questions may have been answered, but how on earth is this supposed to work - can children just be dropped off ad hoc or do they need to book? If the former then how do they know how much toast, milk etc to order and how many staff need to be there? And if there is a booking system, will there be consequences if they don't show up (presumably not if this is a universal service)? Or is the government/other parents basically going to be subsidizing an option for them to show up if they feel like it, with food then inevitably going to waste if the numbers fluctuate a lot?

I know many teachers - most are in school by 8am or well before.
it’s not like teachers rock in at 8.55am and down tools at 3.30pm… like most of us they work longer days…

Exactly. In the adverts it’s basically says ‘ask your school’. Ffs - they are betraying teachers and schools again.

Or,
actually, it can be managed - like in our city schools- and schools benefit from better behaviour from kids who aren’t coming into school late and hungry?

My fear is that the parents who already pay for wraparound care in breakfast club (ours is from 7.30-9) will be asked to pay more to subsidize the "free" half hour breakfast club for everyone else under the new scheme.

That's one possibility-like the nurseries have been forced to do.

Or staff redundancies.

Or schools stop their breakfast club offer altogether if they can prove it will be running at a loss. Many school budgets are already stuffed so can't plan for something big like this that will take money they don't have from them.

I don't think there can be only one staff member on-site, given safeguarding.

The WRAC in my school always had two, even when there were only one or children, I, as the headteacher had to work in the same room.

My governors decided that the implications on my time (having to be in school 7.30 until 18.00 everyday) were too much and accepted the loss that the WRAC made, given that the aim at the time was to encourage more families to the school.

Christ, we all like a good moan don’t we??? Rather than saying - here’s something that’s fairly easy to implement that will benefit parents, kids, and teachers…
We talk about instilling growth mindsets in our school children and yet seem unable to cover the basics ourselves.

It’s a great idea to feed kids who haven’t been fed. Another ideological win. Obviously it’s amazing.

Practicalities? Cost? Logistics?

They’ve not thought about or analysed any of it. No different to their usual mo.

I know many teachers - most are in school by 8am or well before.

Yep, lots get in at 7.30, to photocopy, set up their classrooms, plan, do displays, mark work and assess. They won't be getting in early to work more hours serving kids cereal and supervising them in the hall.

Yes. And in bigger schools, what will it be breakfast shifts? How long will it take? Who’ll do it? Etc etc etc. 🙄🙄

In what way will it benefit teachers? They're the ones who will be forced to doing additional hours on top of the unpaid hours they already do in staffing it. It's an ill thought out policy which will be an absolutely nightmare for schools who are already under immense strain with shoestring budgets and cut backs on staffing. Also in what way is it easy to implement? Do you think its as simple as just swinging the doors open earlier and food magically appearing?

My fear is that the parents who already pay for wraparound care in breakfast club (ours is from 7.30-9) will be asked to pay more to subsidize the "free" half hour breakfast club for everyone else under the new scheme.

Probably.

Christ, we all like a good moan don’t we??? Rather than saying - here’s something that’s fairly easy to implement

But that's what people are saying; it's not 'easy to implement' if you haven't got enough money to pay for the staffing or a room big enough for large numbers of children to sit and eat in. If schools don't pay support staff from 8am already because of lack of funds, that is a big cost that they would have to now find. Or if they pay support staff out of the £4.50 per child they charge parents for breakfast club which they won't now be getting, that doesn't work either.
You can't pay staff wages out of thin air.

What red tape is there about providing a piece of toast and fruit? They already give fruit out at snack time

I understand that we are in the middle of an economic crisis but when did so many parents become unable to feed their children due to lack of money that the government had to feed all children?

30 children, 60p each is £18, £14 ta wage? And £4 to cover a few loafs of bread and jam. Probably 80p per child would make more sense but it doesn't seem completely unmanageable

Not sure, but the same who expect the government to provide stuff like this are usually the first to call out government interference and state my kids not the govs xoxo

Yet another under-funded government ‘win’. Meanwhile many of those very politicians will be claiming their breakfasts on their expenses no doubt, and at a rate of considerably more than 60p per day.

Do you have any idea how tight school budgets are? A lot can't afford supply staff if a teacher is off, have cut right back on support staff, can't afford basics such as glue etc and so any additional spend is too much.

"the cost to school is literally nothing"

Staffing - salaries and on costs for a start.

I can only guess the person who made the above comment isn't managing a school budget ? We have had to think very creatively as to how we can man our breakfast club.

Do school pupils in the UK really not get breakfast at home before they leave for school? You are all talking like it's the norm for schools to offer this - is it?

I'm in France, I don't think there are breakfast clubs here at all. And school starts at 8am, with pre-school care starting from 7:30am.

My dcs are now college/secondary but their primary opened doors at 8:30 and we could drop kids off, there was breakfast available (cereal/toast/fruit). They also ran a breakfast club to help working parents that you paid for and could drop off at 7:30am.
They subscribed to fare share to help provide the free breakfasts, they sold the surplus to staff and parents to partially help pay for fare share.

It’s to help families on low income with the cost of feeding children.

We tried to run a breakfast club in our secondary a few years ago , offered to all but hoping to catch those more in need. Run voluntarily by a couple of teachers and myself as support staff. Problems included finding someone to order the food - ended up being me during my normal working day. Trying to find somewhere to hold it , had to be in the corner of a classroom, so someone had to quickly clean up. Somewhere needed to store equipment eg toaster which needed PAT testing. Somewhere to store food , lockable or else it got nicked . A fridge for milk etc - no money for one so had to use staff room at other end of the building. And all this had to be fitted around our usual jobs. It fizzled out in the end, the majority of pupils associated it with being a PP pupil so wouldn’t come. Most pupils came by bus so couldn’t come earlier anyway. Such a shame really, it was great seeing pupils all sitting together round a table chatting, but there was no money, it relied on volunteer staff which wasn’t sustainable and there were just too many problems.

A lot of schools offer paid for breakfast clubs, as the name suggests many provide food but they're mainly just to allow for an earlier drop off so working parents have time to get to work rather than people paying for food (it'd cost way more for the club than to just have something at food, so really paying for the time). The government has said all schools will now offer this to all pupils free of charge but without providing any further financial assistance to already tight school budgets, not support on the logistics of providing this.