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Breadline Britain: Demand grows for school breakfasts

School's breakfast club 'something to look forward to every day' Link to video: School's breakfast club 'something to look forward to every day'

A few minutes spent leafing through the forms sent to charities by schools hoping to get funding to provide pupils with free breakfasts builds up a vivid picture of how teachers all over the country are struggling to help ill-fed children who come into school hungry.

"Around 40% of first aid referrals from last year were deemed to be caused by lack of breakfast," a teacher writes from a school on the Hartcliffe estate in Bristol, adding: "Many of our children do not eat before school and this leads to many problems throughout the school day." Staff at a school in Blackburn say they have observed pupils who are "underweight and pale", and have "poor concentration, are tired and lethargic, often complain of feeling hunger pangs". A teacher from Merseyside writes: "We have undertaken a survey today and over a quarter of our children have not had breakfast in key stage two [seven to 11-year-olds] this morning."

Charities that fund breakfast clubs in schools report a dramatic increase in applications from teachers across the UK, for financial support to help them set up or expand existing provision of subsidised breakfast. They believe the rise is at least in part the result of the financial crisis and of the government's austerity drive, which has seen benefits payments frozen or cut.

Children are often understandably reluctant to discuss why it is that they haven't had breakfast at home. During a series of visits to pre-school clubs in London and Manchester, pupils talked readily about how much they like the food available at the subsidised sessions, but were less forthcoming about why that food was not available at home.

A six-year-old boy in Manchester, whose mother is not working, says he comes "because we don't have cereal at home".

A 10-year-old girl, eating two toasted bagel halves and drinking a glass of orange juice, before school at a London primary explains, unwillingly, why she comes. "Sometimes we don't have food. They run out …"

And then what happens? "We get hungry," she says, and turns back to the the school library book she is reading as she eats breakfast.

Carmel McConnell is founder and director of the charity Magic Breakfast, which already funds pre-school clubs in 210 schools, selected because all have more than 50% of pupils receiving free school meals. It helps feed 6,000 pupils. She said there had been a sharp rise in demand since the recession; at the beginning of 2009, the charity was working in just 149 schools and had a waiting list of 20-30 schools who wanted help. Over the past year the waiting list has grown to over 100.

McConnell thinks the charity will be helping at least 250 schools by the end of the year. "The volumes are rising. We are delivering more food to our existing schools and some have started running two sittings instead of just one. Schools are seeing more need among the children, and also funding from other sources has been cut," she said. "The problem is that if you are in low-paid work or on benefits, it doesn't cover the rising cost of food."

Her experience is echoed by other charities working in this area. Ken McMeikan, chief executive of Greggs, the bakers, which also helps provide breakfasts for pupils in deprived areas, says: "It is very much a response to children from the most deprived backgrounds who are starving when they come into school. When I joined in 2008, we did 120 breakfast clubs. There has been a 60% increase in the number of clubs since 2008 – I think it is because we went into recession. We are running to stand still."

He said the company was already sponsoring 191 clubs, helping to feed 9,000 children and had a waiting list of another 100 clubs. "I can remember when that was probably nearer to 30 or 40. My impression is that the numbers are rising. There are more children and families going into poverty. Times are increasingly much tougher financially for these families. Inevitably one of the things that gets cut back in family budgets when times are tough is food." Kellogg's, which runs similar services through the charity Continyou, said they had also seen an increase in the numbers of schools asking for support.

The link between hungry pupils and the economic downturn, unemployment, soaring food and energy costs, and shrinking incomes is complicated. The rise in schools turning to charities for funding is sometimes the result of state funding for existing breakfast schemes being withdrawn. Teachers acknowledge that the reason why children come into school without breakfast are complex, and involve poor parenting as well as stretched finances. But long-standing members of staff at a number of schools are adamant that they are seeing a rise in the number of children coming to school unfed.

At Hill Mead primary school in Brixton, London, the assistant head, Cheryl Stonebridge, who has worked at the school for 35 years, said: "The breakfast club's numbers have probably doubled over the last year, with the recession and people losing their jobs. Benefits haven't gone up in line with rising costs, particularly food, gas and electricity costs. When you're on a very limited income that increase is making a huge difference."

Some children are sent to the 8-9am breakfast club because this gives their parents a chance to start work earlier, but a growing proportion are there to receive the subsidised breakfast which Magic Breakfast helps to provide; the school charges those who can afford it £1 a day, but staff accept that a growing number of children are unable to pay.

One 10-year-old girl says if she doesn't eat breakfast she feels "grumpy, tired, stressed", and concedes that attending school breakfast makes life easier for her mother, an unemployed single parent, because "not all the time she has money".

"Sometimes at the start of the day we find pupils haven't had anything since the previous day's school lunch. We have children telling their teachers they're hungry mid-morning," Stonebridge says. She believes the levels of need are higher than she has known them to be over the course of her teaching career.

"We see poverty in the fact that more children seem to be saying 'I'm hungry'. More families seem to be struggling with the cost of school uniform. We're getting more families who are reluctant to pay contributions to school trips then ever before. If a child is constantly saying 'I'm hungry', I will meet the parents. More often than not it's not a child protection issue; it's just that they have no money for a period of time."

She concedes that there may be an element of poor budgeting, but stresses: "Hunger definitely does exist in London. I think it's very difficult if you're comfortable on your salary to understand the difficulties of having a fixed, low-level income. There are families in London with a high level of rent, who just do not have enough money left. Breakfast to a lot of people is a small thing. There is hunger where families don't have enough money to put together an evening meal. It's difficult to say why these children are hungry, but the money just runs out."

Her experiences are echoed in at a small primary school in Manchester's southern suburbs, where about 40 children arrive at 8am to queue up for breakfast, served in the school hall. The headteacher, who has been with the school for 15 years, but who asks that her school should not be identified to avoid upsetting the parents, said the number of pupils arriving for breakfast, which costs 15p per item, has doubled in the past 18 months, and is usually attended by about 70 children. The rising numbers of pupils wanting breakfast is only one of a number of indicators that families are under more pressure financially.

"We can see a definite rise in hardship. There are fewer children with gym kits. We're not talking about something that's dear, but there are a few children who don't have the T-shirts, shorts, swimming costumes. That has definitely changed, particularly recently. One indicator of poverty is how grubby they are by Friday. It could be to do with electricity or soap powder. They only have one set of uniform, not three," she says.

As well as the heavily-subsidised breakfast, the school makes and sells about 80 pieces of toast every day at break time and serves pieces of fruit and cheese.

"If children had had a good breakfast, then they wouldn't need to have toast at 10 o'clock," the head says. She wonders if part of this failure to feed children properly in the morning is also to do with a weakening of parenting skills. "I have taught in schools in this area for nearly 30 years. We have lost a generation of parents who are able to parent. Part of that is managing their money well," she says. "I do also think parents choose to spend on things that we didn't have, big televisions. There is this ease about getting hold and borrowing money and that comes back to bite you."

In the hall the children, even older ones, are playing with pink dough, cutting out shapes with biscuit cutters or sellotaping egg-boxes together, cutting bits out of them with child-sized scissors.

"If you don't come to breakfast, you get hungry. Sometimes you don't eat at home," an eight-year-old boy says.

Why? He pauses and thinks. "Because you get up late." The children do not willingly admit to there being a shortage of food at home.

A ginger-haired boy in year four says: "I come to get healthy. You get fruit and bagels; that's healthy." If he doesn't eat a proper breakfast he begins to feel sad, he says.

One of the supervisers says that many of the families have very high levels of debt. "I know that some children haven't had tea the night before; they tell me. It has got worse since the recession. I talk to parents about how expensive food is now, about how hard it is to feed children on a budget."

In the school office, an unemployed single mother of two at the school describes why she likes the system. She is 30, but the lines on her forehead make her look much older.

"It's definitely cheaper than having the stuff at home," she says. The amount she has every week to spend on food is reduced by the repayments on a £100 Shopacheck voucher she took out earlier this year to buy food at Iceland, on one of the weeks she was struggling. It helped her at the time, because she didn't have any money, but she now has to pay back £160.

After heating, phone and electricity bills, "that probably leaves about £60, which doesn't go far. Everything is expensive at the moment. They want lollies, treats I can't get them because it would be taking from things I have to have. I don't buy breakfast for myself," she says. She has looked for work, but has so far been unable to find anything.

"A lot of parents are in the same position. You don't like to admit you are struggling," she says. "They do love to have chicken, mash and gravy," she adds, but yesterday there wasn't much food in the fridge. "They had toast for supper last night." She pauses, and adds, more cheerfully: "With butter. I didn't have anything."

Another single mother of a nine-year old boy says that Monday is the worst day of the week. "I had 50p in my pocket by the end of the day. Sending a child to breakfast club is a form of saving one meal. You think, that's one meal covered," she says. "The basics have become so expensive. I budget ahead, I plan the meals we're going to have every single day of the week. You shop around for the cheapest places, if you are fortunate enough to have the time to shop around. You have to sit down and have the brain of an accountant."

McConnell, founder and director of the charity Magic Breakfast, says teachers often talk to her of "midweek hunger" which strikes around Wednesday, when pay packets are running out.

Teachers at a big secondary school on the outskirts of Manchesterhave similar, anecdotal accounts of new poverty among students.

"We have found that children are coming into school with canvas shoes on because they can't afford proper shoes," the headteacher said. She too requested apologetically that we did not name her or the school, in case prospective parents read about it and said: "I'm not sending my children there because there are poor people there."

The school receptionist said she went out twice last week, with two pupils, to buy them shoes because their parents couldn't afford to. "We go out and buy school shoes – that way they're not getting into trouble. The sole had come off one boy's shoe, and he couldn't afford to buy new ones; the other one lost a shoe in PE and couldn't afford new ones. It has got worse. I say, nobody needs to know, this is between you and your family," she says.

Fifty miles away at High Greave infant school, in a part of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, that has very high unemployment among parents, Paul Sheard, who supervises the breakfast club, says numbers have remained constant but "it is certainly noticeable that the number of children who come because their families were working has reduced.

"There are definitely families who can't afford to buy breakfast. The other day a child came in late for breakfast club and we'd cleared away already. He was inconsolable and sobbed. He hadn't had any tea the night before – only a pack of crisps. Instances like this show the level of need."

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