Magic Breakfast Policy Officer Peter Whitehead highlights the benefits
At Magic Breakfast, we’re proud to have delivered breakfasts to children across the UK for more than 20 years. Our aim is no more or less than eliminating child morning hunger. To this end we provide breakfasts to thousands of children every school day – helping in the here and now – and looking forward we work with politicians from across the political spectrum to achieve a country where no child is hungry in the morning.
Recently, we’ve agreed to work with Camden and Wandsworth Councils and have previously worked with Hammersmith. These partnerships allow us to embed ourselves, working alongside local authorities to deliver impact across the area.
The first, and perhaps most immediately tangible effect of school breakfast provision on children and young people, especially those experiencing disadvantage, is proven positive impacts on educational attainment, concentration, focus and behaviour in the classroom:
• Improved GCSE results: Research conducted by The University of Leeds (2019) found that children in secondary school who consume breakfast regularly achieve, on average, two GCSE grades more than children who rarely eat breakfast.
• Improved literacy and numeracy: Research carried out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) found that providing a free, nutritious breakfast to Year 2 pupils boosted children’s reading, writing and maths by an average of two months’ progress over the course of the academic year compared to pupils in schools with no provision.
• Attendance: The same study also found attendance increased in schools offering breakfast provision, with 26 fewer half-days of absence per year in a class of 30. This was alongside a reduction in late arrivals.
This last one is especially important at the moment. Persistent absence has skyrocketed since Covid, and schools all over the country are struggling with higher rates of absence. Giving children greater structure in the morning and the guarantee of a nutritious meal can be powerful tools in helping to get the attendance crisis under control.
We know that breakfast can help transform the lives of young people and their life outcomes. But there’s another reason that I think breakfast provision is transformative. Breakfast helps families weather shock, and that’s something we should really think about more.
Many of us are ill-equipped to handle financial shock. As a nation, we have far too many people close to the poverty line and too many who are ‘just about managing’. Too often these groups don’t receive state help, falling just above thresholds, earning just too much to qualify for state benefits. A solid percentage of UK citizens have meagre levels of savings (the figure waxes and wanes but rarely exceeds £500), and one in five Britons have less than £100 in savings (see research by the Yorkshire Building Society for example).
This problem is especially acute in London, a city with one of the highest numbers of millionaires per square mile in the world, but also many families struggling. For many of those, the ability to weather a small shock – the car breaks down, the boiler packs in, the breadwinner needs a month off work with illness – has simply vanished. We have built very little slack into our lives and our systems.
This filters down further. On a smaller scale still, our lives are so often riven by shock – we get a text saying our childcare has fallen through due to illness, one child is unwell and needs looking after while their sibling needs to get to school, the alarm fails to go off.
School breakfast provision is crucial to ensure that no child is hungry, of course. But beyond this, it builds slack into the morning routines and daily lives of families.
Families facing financial difficulty can have the comfort of knowing that there’s one fewer meal they need to heat and put on the table. The parent who needs morning childcare can get to work. The family who didn’t have time for breakfast know that the children will be fed when they get to school.
These things happen every day, in every school. No doubt today at Tufnell Park there’ll be car trouble, tube issues, a boiler that broke, a sibling who woke up with a fever and a cough, a late-night cramming session ahead of that big meeting, all leading to a difficult morning.
Breakfast’s a small fix to a wider problem, but in each of those scenarios, that breakfast means a morning has been made less stressful. People’s lives have been improved in a tangible way. Children are better off, and therefore so are their families. This then scales up – when children succeed, London succeeds, the UK succeeds, and society succeeds.
This is why Magic Breakfast works to change what mornings look like for children and young people across the UK.
As well as our work in London, we work with national government where we can, and have recently expanded our work with local authorities to ensure that more children and young people get access to breakfast. We know that where national government has failed to provide, local authorities can step in. The financial position that many councils find themselves in can make this difficult, but we’re committed to working together to find solutions.
We’ve been thrilled to establish working relationships with more local authorities. It’s exciting to solve issues at a local level, and local authority level provision allows for greater partnership work, for instance with health groups, and the opportunity to work with suppliers on a smaller scale. Our Engagement team will be undertaking outreach work in the coming weeks, opening new conversations with councils across the country.
All of this, however, is thanks to our supporters, who make it possible for us to do the work we do.
If you’d like to support Magic Breakfast, there’s so many ways to get involved. For details see our web site www.magicbreakfast.com. You can donate, you can register as a supporter, you can take part in our campaigns. You can talk to your elected representatives about breakfast provision. From breakfasts in your area to changing national policy, everyone has a role to play.
Magic Breakfast is a registered charity. For more information visit Instagram @magicbreky, Facebook @magicbreakfastuk, Twitter @magic_breakfast and LinkedIn @ Magic Breakfast