Just six months ago the Labour Party swept into power at the General Election with a ‘fully costed, fully funded, credible plan to turn the country around’.
Among the manifesto pledges was one to introduce free breakfast clubs in all primary schools in England. Around 12% of state schools in England already offer a taxpayer-subsidised breakfast club through the National School Breakfast Club Programme (NSBP), but Labour’s proposal would expand breakfast clubs to all primary schools in England.
It would also continue existing provision for low-income pupils via the NSBP (which is set to run out in July 2025) and increase the funding.
The party argues that this will improve learning, tackle high rates of absence post-pandemic, support families through cost-of-living pressures, and help parents to work by offering before-school childcare.
Labour’s manifesto committed to spending £315m on breakfast clubs by 2028–29, but it offered no details of what model of provision they intended to adopt or what they expected take-up to be.
Concern over this lack of detail prompted LACA, the national organisation of school meal providers, to canvass its members about their attitude towards the breakfast club plan.
National Chair Judith Gregory told a recent LACA seminar that a survey of members showed that just 40% said they supported it, while 39% said they did not.
And when the question was phrased differently, then 72% said they would prefer to see the funding diverted to support lunches, while only 9% disagreed with that proposition.
She also revealed that LACA had done a simple costing of the scheme that priced breakfast provision at £1.98 per child for food and labour, a figure that did not include costs for supervision and cleaning.
She said that working on a 27% uptake – which is what Wales achieves with its own longstanding breakfast club programme – would put the annual cost of rolling out breakfast clubs to schools in England at £528m, more than £200m over the £315m earmarked by the Government.
She says: “There are a number of questions we have beyond the simple one about apparent lack of funding.
“Who will deliver the breakfast service – school caterers, schools, or contractors? How will the timings work? In Wales we only have enough time to eat breakfast, it’s not a child-minding service. And time is needed to set up and clean up afterwards in multi-use areas.
“There’s also the question of staffing. Will the teaching staff be involved at all? And is the breakfast club scheme for all pupils or just free school meals (FSM) pupils?”
The next move by the Department for Education was the announcement in November that it wanted 750 schools to sign up for breakfast club trials starting in April 2025 and running through the summer term.
The plan was to then extend the roll-out to all 16,791 primary schools in England at the start of the academic year in September this year.
Announcing the timetable, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was reported by the BBC as saying that the Government was going to work initially with schools that had the ‘capacity and desire’ to move quickly as part of a £7m pilot scheme running during the summer term.
“We think it will help with the national rollout from next September [2025] to allow some schools to go first and to try and make sure that it works really well in making sure that every child gets a really good start to the day,” she said.
The announcement by the DfE that schools could apply to be one of 750 ‘early adopters’ did nothing to calm one of LACA’s specific concerns that the breakfast clubs will be used to offer childcare. It fears that school catering staff will be co-opted into providing a service they are neither trained nor qualified for and without sufficient funding to meet the full costs involved.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said at the time: “Families will soon be able to access 30 minutes of quality childcare ahead of the start of the school day.
“Breakfast clubs in every primary school will make a huge difference to children, families, and schools - removing barriers to opportunity by helping children learn, making sure no child starts school hungry, and helping families with the cost of childcare around the school day, to help keep money in people’s pockets.”
The DfE quoted survey figures it said showed that more than 20% of non-working mothers would prefer to work if they could arrange good quality, convenient, reliable and affordable childcare, and over half of parents said they had problems finding formal childcare for their child that is flexible enough to fit their needs.
It added that the November Budget had tripled investment in breakfast clubs to more than £33m for 2025-26 to fund the early adopter scheme as well as continue to support the existing National School Breakfast Club Programme this year.
The idea that free breakfast clubs were about more than simply a good start to the day for young children was further driven home when the Children’s Wellbeing Bill was published in December. It will require every state-funded school with children on roll from Reception to Year 6 to offer a free breakfast club before the start of each school day.
Announcing the bill, the DfE said: “This is part of a wider package of interventions to ensure support is available to families before and after school with an expectation that all schools with primary-aged pupils have wraparound childcare.”
Bridget Phillipson herself described the plans as a ‘landmark opportunity for schools to be in the vanguard of change’.
“From helping with flexible working for families, to improving behaviour and attendance, the supportive start to the day that breakfast clubs provide will help drive high and rising standards for every child.
“This Government is delivering change that will make a real difference to families up and down the country,” she said.
The worrying lack of detail, the very short timetable to full roll-out of free school breakfast clubs, and the concerns the scheme might not be adequately funded were then thrown into sharp relief in December when The Times newspaper said that ministers were preparing to delay the full introduction by up to a year.
It reported: “In response to concerns that schools do not have the capacity to implement the scheme, the department for education has put back plans to begin delivering the project nationwide from September.
“The Government is now expected to delay the project until April 2026 at the earliest, and possibly until the start of the following school year.
“There are growing concerns within the sector that many schools are not ready to introduce the scheme, even if the funding is there to pay for it,” it added, quoting a Government source as saying ‘no final decisions had been made on timings for national rollout’.
Meanwhile, research by the New Britain Project (NBP), a think tank, found that many in the sector felt the changes were being rushed through without ‘the staffing and clarity needed’ to make it a success.
The NBP has been examining the practical implementation of Labour’s pledges and said that the breakfast club programme risked repeating the mistakes of the post-Covid National Tutoring Programme, which cost £1.1bn but failed to show tangible results.
Anna McShane, director of the project, said the Government had yet to answer ‘basic questions’ about the scheme.
“What does universal provision mean? What will children eat? Who will staff these clubs without pulling resources from other areas? And what happens if the uptake falls short of expectations?” she asked.