Breakfast Clubs: Early Adopters

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement. The Government’s announcement in relation to breakfast clubs builds, obviously, on the approach of the previous Government, who ran a breakfast club programme from 2018. As we know, the vast majority of schools have a breakfast club; some are free and others charge a very low fee.

Although I understand and absolutely respect that the Government are following through on their manifesto commitment to deliver breakfast clubs in primary schools, can the Minister clarify for the House what will happen to breakfast clubs in secondary schools funded by the previous Administration when that funding ends? Similarly, the Statement talked about the growth in childcare provision and the very significant funding going into that, which also builds on previous Conservative government policy.

On the specifics of the scheme, the Minister will be aware that the Institute for Fiscal Studies report last year calculated that the £315 million announced by the Government for breakfast clubs would fund only the food element in all primary schools. As she knows, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill proposes half an hour of childcare as well as breakfast. Can the Minister clarify what percentage of funding for the new breakfast clubs the Government will provide? What discussions have the Government had with schools on how to cover any shortfall?

The Minister will have seen the report from the BBC yesterday of a small primary school in Lancashire that was part of the 750-school pilot phase and felt that it was not able to continue because, in its case, the funding did not cover its costs. Obviously, there has been wider commentary on this issue. Can she shed light on whether there is truth in the rumours that some schools were invited to take part in the pilot but were unable to and, if so, what the main reasons for that were?

Can the Minister also confirm what percentage of schools in the new scheme had no breakfast club provision before this?

I have tried to work out the Secretary of State’s assertion that the scheme will save families £450 a year. Maths is not my strongest suit but perhaps the Minister can help me. The Government, as I understand it, are funding 60p per child and 78p for those children in receipt of pupil premium. On my maths, £450 a year is about £2.30 per school day per child. Equally, if you put it the other way round, the government funding of £315 million spread across 4.5 million primary school children is about £70 a year. So can she set out what assumptions the Government are making that are behind the statement of the £450 saving to families?

Finally, I wonder what assumptions the Government are making about the uptake of the scheme. A range of breakfast clubs already exist, of course, with and without additional childcare, and the Government have said they aim to learn from the pilot. Given that the vast majority of schools already have breakfast club provision, I am unclear what the Government need to learn from this pilot as opposed to what has gone before. All this matters, of course, because the Government’s choice—and it is a choice—is to fund breakfast for all children in primary school, including those whose parents were happy to pay for that breakfast and could do so without financial difficulty. It would be helpful for the House if the Minister could explain why.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement to the Floor of the House even if it is a few days behind the Commons. The main thrust from my party is that we would rather have had the emphasis of this put into lunchtime meals, because, from the information I have received, about 40% of children who are eligible for this take it up, and anybody who has dealt with any child, or indeed rush-hour traffic, knows that you have more trouble getting children to school early in the day to get breakfast than you would do at lunchtime, when everybody is there.

That is a fundamental flaw in the system of getting the nutrition in. The second flaw is what is in one of these breakfasts. If it is a sugar-laden breakfast cereal, you have the equivalent of a turkey twizzler in the morning. If it is just preserve on a bit of white bread, you will fill somebody up, but what is the nutritional guarantee?

We have more experience in lunchtime meals—it is easier to get a balance in the meal. You will get a bigger bang for your buck. We also have the idea that people are used to eating that meal at lunchtime, so it will probably be slightly easier to get acceptance. If you are going to do this, what are the steps you will take to make sure it reaches more people? If you are going to put this money in, what is the benefit?

I had prepared a slightly less extensive list of other questions, which the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has got to before me. I will not weary the House by repeating them. The basic thing is the strategy to make sure that you get the best nutritional outcomes for those pupils and get to a higher percentage of the school population. I think we are entitled to know about that from the Government.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

I thank noble Lords for their responses to the Statement made earlier this week by the Secretary of State, in which she spelled out very clearly the delivery plans for the Government’s commitment to deliver on their pledge to provide free breakfast clubs in every state-funded school with primary-age children. Let us reflect on what that means for those children. Evidence shows that, where schools run breakfast clubs, they report improvements to pupil’s behaviour, attendance and attainment. We want every school, child and family to have the chance of those benefits.

In response to the noble Baroness, I think that is where this scheme builds on—in some ways it is fundamentally larger and more significant—the national breakfast club programme, which has previously been running. I know there will have been some enormously good work and pupils will have benefited, but it is not universal; it is not open to every child and every school, and it is not necessarily free. That is the difference in the proposals this Government are putting forward, which are being tested and will be evaluated and developed through the early adopters scheme the Secretary of State announced earlier this week. Some 750 schools, chosen from a whole range of different sizes, regions and levels of deprivation, will have the opportunity to test it.

In response to the question about the continuation of the national breakfast club programme, we have committed to continue that until March 2026 for all those involved. After that, we will make decisions based on the spending review which, of course, is coming soon. The funding made available in the early adopters scheme is not just for food; it is for delivery, staff and food. Compared with the previous scheme, an average school would receive £24,000 as part of this scheme, which is £21,000 more than they would have received as part of the national breakfast club programme. We can see there the scale of the ambition of this breakfast clubs policy.

On the case reported by the BBC, I can assure the noble Baroness that the BBC has now changed that story because it was wrong. There are 754 schools that have accepted and will be part of the early adopters scheme. There is a very small number the department is in discussion with about the details of those arrangements and making sure that they are able to continue. But the vast majority of the schools have taken up this very important opportunity. I think we will learn a lot from their experience about how we can ensure the national rollout.

On the £450 figure, of course, not only are children being provided with breakfast, but they are also being provided with 30 minutes of free childcare as part of the breakfast scheme. A calculation of the value of 30 minutes of free childcare five days a week gives us a figure of up to £450 that could potentially be saved by parents. At a time when parents face considerable cost of living pressures, I am sure that this will be widely adopted and welcomed by parents.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, argued that this should be something that is happening at lunchtime as opposed to breakfast time. The Government already rightly spend a considerable amount of money on free school meals for those who are eligible, but what is being provided here is something universal for all children and free at the beginning of the day. Although it was some time ago for me, I had some sympathy with his picture of the parent in the morning struggling to get themselves and their children organised, and to get themselves to work and their children to school.

However, I have to say that I think that struggle would be made easier by the idea that your child—I would not want anybody to think this ever happened to my children—is not being flung out of the car just before school to start the day in some disarray without having had a proper breakfast, or the time to settle into the school day in a way that is likely to make them calmer and more able to learn. The idea is that not only are we providing children with a breakfast, but we are also providing them with a calm start to the day, and we are providing their families with an additional 30 minutes of childcare first thing in the morning when it is often very needed in order for parents to get to work.

On the point the noble Lord raised about the quality of the food, of course that is important. It is not true that school food standards only apply at lunchtime. They also apply to what will be served in breakfast clubs. That will ensure the quality of food available for those children.

Breakfast clubs will ensure that every child, no matter their circumstances, can achieve their full potential by providing a supportive start to the day. I hope noble Lords will feel able to celebrate and support the scheme, and that we are all able to learn from the 750 early adopters how we can make this policy a real success.