Are primary school breakfast clubs everything they’re cracked up to be? Sue Yardley reports on practitioner research carried out in Kensington and Chelsea.
Breakfast clubs are becoming increasingly popular and can be found in primary schools throughout the UK. Tesco even offers vouchers to buy equipment for them. The main driver for the increase in breakfast clubs is the perceived benefit to children and their families - improved learning, attendance and behaviour at school, punctuality, healthy eating, social development, and fun through play. The clubs also help schools meet their statutory obligations in the Childcare Act 2006 and the Extended Schools core offer requirement for 8am – 6pm childcare. Kensington and Chelsea council has encouraged the development of breakfast clubs in all primary schools, based on locally gathered research.
The Children’s Workforce Development council funded a practitioner-led research project over three months to assess the impact of breakfast clubs against three of the Every Child Matters outcomes - be healthy, enjoy and achieve, and economic well-being. At the time of this research in 2007, 16 breakfast clubs were running, which has since risen to 22 (representing 85% of our primary schools). Councillor Shireen Ritchie, cabinet member for family and children’s services, said: “It has long been recognised that a good, healthy breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This is certainly the case for children. In an ideal world, every child would have eaten a nutritious breakfast before setting out for school. But this is often not the case. This is why our breakfast clubs play such an important role in preparing children for the learning and play that lies ahead of them in the school day. Teachers report that breakfast clubs are successful and that the children who attend them are ready to learn.”
The pilot school used for this research was Oxford Gardens primary school in north Kensington, which set up the borough’s first breakfast club in 2000. Run by the council’s play service, it was set up in response to childcare needs for working parents, as growing numbers of children were being left unsupervised in the playground before the start of the school day. A variety of models have since been adopted for the delivery of breakfast clubs, but all of them are either school-operated or run in partnership with the play service. Oxford Gardens is situated in one of the 10 per cent most deprived wards in the UK. In 2007, 43.7 per cent of the students were eligible for free school meals.
A model for breakfast clubs