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For 6 per cent of all children aged 8-16, the school day starts on an empty stomach. Even more alarmingly, the percentage of children from socially disadvantaged families missing breakfast is double that of children from professional families and in some inner city areas up to a third of all children skip breakfast.

Research indicates that eating breakfast has numerous benefits for children, both in terms of nutrition and their ability to learn, so it is clear that any move to tackle social exclusion and meet health and education targets needs to look at breakfast provision.

The solution for an increasing number of schools is to set up their own breakfast clubs where a variety of food and drink are provided and where children have the chance to socialise with classmates before school and perhaps catch up on studies or take part in other activities.

Statistics on the number of breakfast clubs in existence are hard to come by. Neither the Department for Education and Skills or the Department of Health collect such data.

But Education Extra, a national charity for out-of-school learning, puts the figure at well over 1,000 breakfast clubs now in operation and hundreds more in the process of being set-up.

Cash for setting up and running breakfast clubs comes from a variety of statutory sources including Excellence in Cities, The New Opportunities Fund, Health Action Zones, Education Action Zones and the Children's Fund.

Funding is also available from charitable sources such as Education Extra's Breakfast Club Awards which are sponsored by Kellogg's.¹

Breakfast clubs are operated in a variety of ways. Many are on school premises and are run by school staff but others are held in community centres or are supervised by volunteers and parents.

Two-thirds of the clubs charge children for food - the other third provide it free. Of those that do charge, the rate is typically 30p to 60p per day and many clubs that charge provide some free places for targeted children.

Research into breakfast clubs point to a wide range of benefits for children, teachers and busy parents who can drop children off on their way into work.

A report by Kids Clubs Network and the New Policy Institute² shows that breakfast clubs may improve children's cognition, attendance and classroom behaviour. In particular, the report finds that eating breakfast improves children's problem-solving, memory, visual perception and creative thinking.

Clubs may also have a serious contribution to make in tackling a range of current areas of concern including poor long-term health prospects for disadvantaged children, social isolation and bullying and poor attendance.

Further evidence of the value of breakfast clubs comes from an evaluation carried out by the University of East Anglia³ of 250 breakfast clubs allocated funding under a DoH pilot scheme. The evaluation found evidence that there was a high incidence of breakfast club use among those families with a parent who reported experiencing "marked" or "high" levels of emotional stress and that children with high levels of overall difficulties were more likely to have attended a breakfast club than those children without.

But while several schools involved in the scheme highlighted behavioural improvement as an observed benefit, this outcome was not universal. Teaching staff at several other schools suggested that children had become less well-behaved or more energetic as a result of attending breakfast clubs and could therefore be more difficult to control in the classroom.

Equally, concerns have been raised that while some schools have maintained a healthy fare, others, especially those who have been keen to offer children a say in the running of the clubs, have resorted to providing food and drink high in fat and sugar in an effort to encourage more children to attend.

But despite a few reservations, the consensus remains that breakfast clubs are a good thing for children's health and education. So should the government go a step further and require all schools to set one up?

Andrew Harrop, a researcher at the New Policy Institute, which has carried out several studies of breakfast clubs, doubts whether that is a realistic proposition. "The ideal would be that there would be a breakfast club in every school. The problem with that approach is that the government has got into trouble in the past for being too prescriptive. If it said every school must have a breakfast club and have ring-fenced funding for it, heads would say they were not being given the freedom to run their own school. We want to have widespread funding available but it can't be compulsory."


If that funding continues to be available it seems the number of breakfast clubs will multiply and the days of children turning up for lessons with empty stomachs could be numbered.

¹ Breakfast Club Awards Scheme details at www.breakfast-club.co.uk

² Fit For School: How Breakfast Clubs Meet Health, Education and Childcare Needs, New Policy Institute and Kids Club Network, 1999, www.breakfast-club.co.uk/pdfs/Fit%20for%20School.pdf

³ National Evaluation of School Breakfast Clubs, University of East Anglia, www.breakfastclubs.net

Porridge off the menu

It's 7.30am and the first pupils are arriving at Whalley Range High School for Girls in Manchester. It may be the last day of term and a non-uniform day at that, but the promise of a tasty bite to eat and the chance to catch up on gossip with friends and watch breakfast TV is enough to get these girls into school well before the start of the first lesson.

The breakfast club, based in the school's Range Restaurant, has proved a big success since it was launched two years ago. It is one of a raft of measures brought in by headteacher Dame Jean Else to boost attendance and create an environment which attracts pupils into school.

She explains: "The breakfast club gets some of the pupils, who perhaps otherwise wouldn't be so keen, out of bed and into school. We've got an attendance record of 95 per cent, which puts us into the top 2 per cent in the country, a real achievement for an inner city school.

 "We pride ourselves on being the home of excellence and for our pupils this is their second home. The breakfast club is just one of the strategies which makes them see school as a warm, welcoming place."

The Early Bytes menu includes cereal and milk at 40p, fresh fruit at 25p as well as the top seller, chocolate croissants at 40p. Theresa Lynch, environment and hospitality manager at the school, says providing what the girls want to eat is vitally important.

"We have cereal and milk on the menu but most of the girls would rather have a cereal bar which is why we started stocking them. They are now one of our best sellers."

Pupils have their identity cards swiped when they make a purchase, which helps staff with the ordering process and allows parents to check up on what their children have been eating.

Staff at the school have noted that pupils who attend the breakfast club tend to settle more quickly into the classroom because they have already had a chat with their friends.

And the pupils themselves are in no doubt that it is a good idea. Samina Akram, aged 11, says: "At home I never have time for breakfast so it's good to come in here and have it with my friends."

Amy Dempsey, aged 14, says: "I wouldn't have breakfast at home. It's nicer here than at home because I can chat with my friends. Having breakfast definitely helps me to concentrate during the day." Education secretary Estelle Morris, a former pupil at the school, would no doubt approve of the club's positive impact.

Though Else, who used to be her PE teacher, isn't letting on as to whether her most famous former pupil would have been first in line for the chocolate croissants.