Posted on 2019-06-10 | 02:09

Dear Nadhim,

I am writing to you to ask you to make an early decision to support continued funding of the National School Breakfast Programme (NSBP) beyond March next year when funding for the programme is currently scheduled to end.

As you will be aware, with the Department for Education’s support, the NSBP has already reached 1,775 schools and is providing free and nutritious breakfasts to an estimated 280,000 children in areas of disadvantage every school day. The NSBP is ensuring that none of these children start the day too hungry to learn, reducing educational attainment gaps between pupils and supporting pupils to develop lifelong healthy eating habits. The NSBP contributes to social mobility by giving every child the chance to excel at school and to achieve their own unique potential, regardless of their socioeconomic background. In my own constituency four schools and hundreds of children benefit from the programme.

This programme makes a vital contribution towards achieving your Department’s priority objective of promoting the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children and young people.  It also delivers on the Department’s commitment to prioritising the people and places left behind and contributes towards cross Whitehall initiatives such as the Government’s Childhood Obesity Plan for Action.

An evaluation of the Magic Breakfast model carried out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that children in primary schools where free, universal breakfast is provided achieve an average of two months additional academic progress in reading and maths over the course of a year compared to children in schools with no such provision in place. These benefits were observed not just in the pupils eating breakfast at school, but also their peers. Teachers surveyed also reported that breakfast provision improved behaviour, alertness and concentration amongst pupils who might otherwise be missing out on a whole morning of learning.  The NSBP seeks to give every child the chance to excel at school, reflecting your Department’s vision to make sure that everyone has the chance to reach their potential.

An early decision to continue funding beyond next March is now needed to maintain the momentum of this very successful programme. Although the aim of the NSBP is to develop sustainable high quality breakfast provision beyond the life of the programme a decision to continue funding will reassure schools in my constituency and across the country, that may otherwise struggle to have funds in place to sustain breakfast provision beyond March 2020, that they will continue to benefit from the programme. Such a decision will also prevent hundreds of thousands of children from once again being at risk of hunger in the morning and create new opportunities to provide nutritious, free school breakfasts to more children in more schools.

As discussions about future public spending continue and decisions are taken in your Department and across Whitehall, I very much hope that, with your support, we can confidently anticipate an early announcement that the Government will provide continued funding for this cost-effective and high impact programme beyond next March.