Sending your child to school without breakfast can affect their learning
Thousands of British school children face going hungry in the morning after teachers revealed that one in eight breakfast clubs have been shut down.
This is resulting in 75,000 children going without breakfast each day.
Around 20,000 breakfast clubs were running in schools around Britain providing a nutritious meal for children as well essential childcare for working parents. However, 3,000 of these have now closed and more than half of teachers said that budget cuts were to blame for this.
The new report by Kellogg’s Corn Flakes has revealed that of those breakfast clubs still going, 45 per cent of teachers think budget cuts will force their breakfast clubs to close unless other funding becomes available. This is despite Prime Minister David Cameron recently saying a child’s future depends on a good start to the day, with a healthy breakfast.
The report by Kellogg’s reveals the detrimental impact the closure of breakfast clubs could have according to teaching professionals across the UK. Nearly two thirds of teachers believe that the closure of their breakfast club would result in lower grades in their school. Behaviour would also deteriorate according to more than half of the teachers and nearly all felt those students that had eaten breakfast were able to concentrate better in lessons that those that hadn’t.
The report also revealed attendance and punctuality would also be negatively impacted and one in six teachers felt that certain children wouldn’t get breakfast at all if it wasn’t for the breakfast club.
With around one million school children already going without a proper breakfast every day and one in four children either starting the day with no breakfast or junk food such as burgers or crisps, the potential loss of school breakfast clubs has led to significant debate amongst health experts and politicians about the long term health implications of such losses.
Education Secretary Michael Gove has stated that corporate organisations may need to ‘put their hands in their pockets’ to bridge the funding gap.
In response, the ‘Help give a child a breakfast’ campaign is being launched by Kellogg’s with the company pledging to make a donation to school breakfast clubs for every pack of cornflakes sold with the target of raising a minimum of £300,000 – which equates to one million breakfasts by the end of 2012.
It’s hoped the campaign will help bridge the funding gap and Kellogg’s are calling on schools to apply for the grants by visiting giveachildabreakfast.co.uk.