Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of funding universal breakfast clubs to give every child a healthy breakfast, more time to play with their friends and extra time for teachers to provide targeted catch-up support.

This Government wants pupils to be healthy and well nourished, and encourages pupils to adopt a healthy balanced diet and healthy life choices, through school funding, legislation and guidance.

Up to £24 million will be available to extend our support for school breakfast clubs until 2023, to make sure thousands of children in disadvantaged areas have a healthy start to the day. Further details on the invitation to tender for the delivery of the future programme can be found through the following link: https://education.app.jaggaer.com/web/login.html (under ‘View Opportunities’).

We know that breakfast clubs can bring a wide range of benefits for children. An evaluation by the Education Endowment Foundation found that supporting schools to run a free of charge, universal breakfast club before school delivered an average of 2 months’ additional progress for pupils in Key Stage 1 with moderate to low security. Breakfast club schools also saw an improvement in pupil behaviour and attendance.

The Department’s guidance has been updated to make clear that providers who run community activities, holiday clubs, breakfast or after-school clubs, tuition and other out-of-school provision for children, are able to continue to open for both outdoor and indoor provision, provided that they follow the protective measures set out by the Government in this guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/protective-measures-for-holiday-or-after-school-clubs-and-other-out-of-school-settings-for-children-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak.

Parents and carers are only able to access settings for certain essential purposes. Providers should only offer indoor and outdoor face-to-face provision to vulnerable children and young people where the provision is reasonably necessary to enable their parents and carers to work, search for work or undertake education or training; attend a medical appointment, address a medical need or attend a support group; be used by electively home educating parents as part of their arrangements for their child to receive a suitable full-time education; or be used as part of their efforts to obtain a regulated qualification, meet the entry requirements for an education institution, or to undertake exams and assessments.

The Government is committed to helping children and young people make up education lost as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. This is why we have invested £1.7 billion to give early years, schools and colleges support to help pupils get back on track, including additional funding for tutoring, early language support and summer schools.

We have also appointed Sir Kevan Collins as Education Recovery Commissioner who will advise Ministers on the approach for education recovery, with a particular focus on helping pupils catch up on lost education as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.