School turned down funded breakfast club

[MightyGoldBear]

The school my children go to were part of the 750 selected, as the first roll outs for funded breakfast club. They turned it down! And said they won't do it even when it's rolled out for all schools.

It would of helped so many children and parents. Their reasoning was the school is too small. It's absolutely not.
Am I being unreasonable to find this so frustrating?

They don't offer after school club they don't offer any holiday clubs. I have a sen child who would really benefit with a soft transition into school. He has had periods of school refusal.
This is our nearest school. I don't drive (cant afford to learn, working is difficult with care needs) My sen child can't tolerate other transport than with me or his dad. We have no outside help.

It's just so frustrating that the school made all the right sounds at one point that they were going to offer more for children and parents. Only to turn it all down. With the cost of living crisis there will undoubtedly be children going to school hungry or sometimes just life happens and that chance to have breakfast or a soft transition would set more children up for the day. It just seems really rubbish of them to not even try a reduced scaled down version of it.

They might not have the staff or space. I’m worried that if my son’s school starts it, it will be overrun with children of parents who don’t even have to get to work. It’s essential for me to be able to drop him there early on my working days.

Also they can’t scale it down if it’s universal can they?

Same story at my DS’s son - they got funding, it was announced and lauded in local press. But they say they can’t afford to run it. I think it’s tragic tbh.

The scheme isn't funded sufficiently. Makes good headlines though.

YABU

The funding is inadequate, it increases staffing costs, supervision needs, utilities bills and will create more issues than it’s worth to a school.

Frankly, it’d be cheaper to just hand out supermarket cheap loaves to the disadvantaged kids every week.

"funded" isn't actually funded, that's why.

Don't blame the school please. Blame the government for headline chasing without the money and resources to back it up.

I'm not sure they could try a scaled down version - the funded breakfast clubs allow all pupils to turn up half an hour before school without warning. I don't think schools can pick and choose which pupils it applies to. Plus, it has to be staffed somehow, which is difficult when you don't know how many pupils you'll have from day to day.

It does sound a bit rubbish they have no out of school provision but I don't blame any school for not trialling this and waiting to see how it all actually works before committing.

At 60p a child what do you expect. They are taking a stan against the dismal funding.

That’s so frustrating! I’m sorry @MightyGoldBear, people can say it’s for x,y, or z reasons but it still sucks to have your hopes raised then dashed.

Same as the early years funding. The government big it all up, pay piss poor rates and make the schools and childcare settings look like the bad guys for not accepting.

Your annoyance is at the wrong people.

Because the "funding" for these breakfast clubs is a joke.

In terms of wraparound childcare and holiday provision, even if we could afford to pay our support staff to work longer hours and work in the school holidays (which we can't) most would not want to. It is difficult enough to recruit and retain good support staff when we can't pay them what they deserve, many only stay in Education because it works around their own children. There is no way parents would be willing to pay what it would cost for us to staff a holiday provision, not to mention the increase in utilities. We can barely afford to keep the lights on as it is.

Probably a stretch on school and staff resources.
The money the government are offering won't cover it, so education would be cut to compensate.
Teachers are their too teach, not feed and look after children earlier in the school day.

I'm not annoyed at school more the situation and all the barriers that are already against us and so many others. It's absolutely not schools fault and there hasnt been any shitty emails or phone calls from me. Just dissapointment after they did a survey and it looked as it was going ahead.

I see now it's another one of the schemes that has a catchy tag line of free but actually isn't feasible in real terms.
I just got my hopes up I'm not sure why I didn't learn from the "free" nursery hours scheme.

YABU, it's not a properly funded scheme and lots of schools won't be able to afford to offer it or have the space for it. Also who is going to supervise the children? I use a paid breakfast club at my school, I'd rather keep that than have an underfunded free one as with the paid one the kids actually get offered a decent breakfast and activities. I wouldn't want my child going to the free one and getting half a piece of toast and no proper activities.

If parents can’t afford a bowl of cereal or slice of toast then I don’t know what to say. It’s not up to schools to make sure kids eat.

Oh, that's interesting, they've trained loaves of bread to look after children before and after school, that's really clever.

I think the government have only pushed it so they can tell parents to take jobs that start before school. They want to give parents no excuses around their work times.

When my child was at primary the lunch time supervisors did extra hours to cover breakfast club but that comes with an increase in their wage bill.

That's not what this is about. The school seemingly can't afford this intervention or staff it - not their fault and obviously difficult for the OP too.

My thoughts exactly

Op, if there’s no before school but you and other’s need one to be able to work then I would approach the school to see if they can recommend any child minders. It’s also worth putting a post on a local Facebook group looking for child minder’s. Some local nurseries offer before and after school places as well and then transport the children to and from school. It’s worth asking around to see what other working parents from the same school do.

It’s not sufficiently funded. It isn’t easy to find people willing to work for an hour (or less) early in the morning for minimum wage. People already in school at that time (like me) are actually there because they have other work to do.

I am in no way questioning what you're saying, I am interested in learning more. Can you point me to the info about 60p per child please?

I'm not surprised they've turned it down. Good for them. It would actually cost the school time, money and and space to do this.

The funding isnt really enough but it makes good headlines on the face of it.

It's the same as supposedly funded nursery hours which is causing nurseries to lose money and go out of business.

Yes, it's shocking that some children are sent to school hungry.
It is indeed not the school's responsibility, but it's not an uncommon way to 'catch' the most children possible though, like vaccinations and other health checks.

It's utterly disgusting that any government should think they need a round of applause for trying to find a way to ensure children are fed. Of course they all just blame the government before them.

Increased NI contributions and NMW, it won't be the only school who has to make this decision.

It feels as though schools are having to cut back and slowly reduce anything out of hours unless parents can fund. I would hope some emergency money is set aside for children whose parents are totally useless.

At least they didn't trial it and then pull it, letting people get used to it then raking it away, and perhaps that is part of the calculation, unknown of finances one year to the next.

You could approach the school and see if parents would be able to volunteer to staff a breakfast club? Unlikely to work, but you never know, if parents would offer one or two mornings a week to get a full week of breakfast club? Then your child would benefit and the school might be able to fund the food?