Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing breakfast provisions in schools for children in poverty.

The department knows that it is important for pupils to start the day with a nutritious breakfast. Between March 2018 and July 2021, the National School Breakfast Programme for schools in disadvantaged areas has supported up to 2,450 schools to establish and develop breakfast clubs, and to sustain them in the longer term. We are now investing up to £24 million in a new two year contract to continue our support for school breakfast provision until July 2023.

The department recognises that healthy breakfast clubs can play an important role in ensuring children from all backgrounds have a healthy start to their day so that they enhance their learning potential. An independent evaluation by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, published by the Education Endowment Foundation, found that supporting schools to run a free of charge, universal breakfast club before school delivered, on average, 2 months of additional progress for pupils in key stage 1 with moderate to low security. The evaluation is available here: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/magic-breakfast. A 2017 evaluation commissioned by the department also found that schools perceived important benefits from having a breakfast club, including improving concentration and behaviour in class. This is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/breakfast-clubs-in-high-deprivation-schools.

Throughout the current contract, the department will be working with our provider, Family Action, to monitor different aspects of the current programme, including the benefits the programme is having on pupils who are attending. We will consider the best opportunities to share information on the programme as it progresses.