Breakfast Clubs: Early Adopters

Alice Macdonald Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the fact that the early adopters scheme covers schools serving a wide range of settings and communities. We have sought to ensure that there is a representative sample—large and small—of those serving communities with higher levels of deprivation and those with lower levels. The early adopters scheme that we are introducing will have real benefits for parents in Carlisle, including by offering the flexibility at the start of the school day to drop off children a bit earlier, and to take on more hours at work or to get to work. The scheme will make a difference to children’s life chances too, because the evidence is so clear that a softer start to the school day makes a big difference to children’s attendance, their behaviour and, crucially, their attainment at school.

[Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome today’s announcement, and I am very pleased to see that St Williams primary and Kinsale infant school in my constituency of Norwich North will be among those that benefit from the early adopters programme—they are two of the 12 schools in Norfolk that will benefit. Will the Secretary of State expand on the “test and learn” principle? As we feed that in nationally, how will we feed it back to schools on an ongoing basis so that they can make improvements, and are there opportunities for schools to join up locally in areas such as procurement?