Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Written evidence submitted by Family Action National School Breakfast Programme (CWSB171)

Children’s Wellbeing and School Bill Committee

Summary

· Family Action is a national charity supporting people through change, challenge or crisis.

· We have been delivering the National School Breakfast Programme (NSBP) since it started in March 2018, and currently support some 2700 schools across England and reach 380,000 children every school day. We therefore wish to submit evidence to the Bill Committee concerning our learning from delivery of school breakfast on a national scale, so it can be used to ensure that the welcome inclusion of a new duty on primary schools to provide a universal school breakfast can achieve the most impact.

· Continual and appropriate monitoring of uptake, quality and impact: Currently the Bill requires that "breakfast club provision is available, free of charge, for all qualifying primary pupils at the school." [1] We believe the Bill should not only set out that provision is required, but that this is monitored for quality regularly and systematically to include elements such as clarity about which children breakfast is reaching, consistency of breakfast provision in different schools and in different areas of the country and whether breakfast is achieving the wider impacts we have seen happen when schools have the support of a national programme such as the NSBP.

· Whilst we do not believe schools set out to provide poor quality provision, without monitoring, the Bill currently lacks incentives and encouragement for schools to strive to maximise the impact of their breakfast provision.

· Ongoing support for schools: Our experience of delivering the NSBP has taught us that schools need continual easy-access support and guidance from an experienced and responsive team to maximise the quality and impact of their breakfast provision and meet the particular needs and circumstances of the pupils within their school.

· We would advocate that the Bill includes provision of appropriate support for schools. Schools need to implement breakfast well to have the positive impact on attendance, punctuality, learning and behaviour seen through the NSBP. Support helps schools set up efficient provision that is cost effective and gives them as much value for money as possible in terms of staffing, food supply, and logistics support.

· A national approach: We know that schools really value being part of a national programme that collates and shares best practice, but that can also provide ongoing individual support to schools. A national approach makes it easier to set clear expectations and ensure equity of provision. We have also achieved significant economies of scale and efficiency with food ordering, supply and delivery.

Ensuring that breakfast provision reaches the pupils who need it most: As we move towards a model of universal breakfast provision and an increasing focus on the provision of childcare through that provision, we need to ensure that a focus is maintained on ensuring that breakfast still reaches the pupils that need it the most. Provision needs to be flexible in the way it is provided to reach different groups of children. The Bill wording therefore needs to enable flexibility of implementation.

1. Family Action is a national charity supporting people through change, challenge or crisis. It’s what we’ve done for over 150 years. We protect children, support young people and adults and offer direct, practical help to families and communities. We see first-hand the power of family to shape lives, for better or worse, so we speak up for the importance of family in national and local policymaking, amplify family voices and represent the changing needs of families in the UK today.

2. Family Action has been delivering the National School Breakfast Programme (NSBP) since it started in March 2018, including throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. We worked with over 1800 schools in the initial programme 2018 – July 2021 with our subcontractor Magic Breakfast, and currently support some 2700 schools across England and reach 380,000 children every school day. The NSBP currently provides 1.9 million breakfasts a week, making us the largest supplier of school breakfasts nationally. Breakfast on the programme is provided free of charge to children and may be delivered in a variety of ways – through a breakfast club, at the school gate or in the playground, at grab and go sites within school or in the classroom before the start of the school day. Further information about the National School Breakfast Programme can be found here National School Breakfast Programme - Family Action.

3. We therefore wish to submit evidence to the Bill Committee concerning our learning from delivery of school breakfast on a national scale, so it can be used to ensure that the welcome inclusion of a new duty on primary schools to provide a universal school breakfast, as set out at clause 21 in the Bill, can achieve the most impact. It is vital that the implementation of this new duty achieves consistent quality in provision, ease of delivery for schools and accessibility for children in different circumstances and with differing needs. We are keen to support the government to create and implement new legislation that has the very best chance of success in reaching those who need breakfast the most.

3. Continual and appropriate monitoring of uptake, quality and impact: Currently the Bill requires that "breakfast club provision is available, free of charge, for all qualifying primary pupils at the school." [2] We believe the Bill should not only set out that provision is required, but that this is monitored for quality regularly and systematically - beyond School Food Standards – to include elements such as clarity about which children breakfast is reaching, consistency of breakfast provision in different schools and in different areas of the country and whether breakfast is still achieving the wider impacts that we have seen happen when schools have the support of a national programme such as the NSBP. [3] Whilst we do not believe schools set out to provide poor quality provision, without monitoring, the Bill currently lacks incentives for schools to strive to maximise the impact of their breakfast provision given other demands on their resources or to focus on the continuous improvement of their provision over time. Within the NSBP we have also seen the benefit of regular monitoring of quality in ensuring that breakfast provision evolves over time and as we keep learning more about the how best to meet the needs of schools, pupils, and parents/carers. As well as putting responsive support services and data collection in place, the views of schools, parents/carers and pupils should be gathered regularly to ensure the programme delivery remains responsive to need as it changes over time. Continual monitoring enables us to confirm that schools are delivering a quality breakfast in a way that is attractive, accessible and non-stigmatising to their own school communities and that is consistent across the country. The importance of a focus on quality and of bespoking provision to the needs and circumstances of different schools needs to be maintained as we move towards universal provision.

4. Ongoing support for schools: Our experience of delivering the NSBP has taught us that schools need continual easy-access support and guidance from an experienced and responsive team, in order to maximise the quality and impact of their breakfast provision and meet the particular needs and circumstances of the pupils within their school. Schools need to implement breakfast well to have the positive impact on attendance, punctuality, learning and behaviour seen through the NSBP. We have seen a broad range of quality of existing breakfast delivery in schools before they start working with the NSBP. Many of the schools on the NSBP did not prioritise setting up breakfast provision previously as it seemed too big an undertaking to manage or they had a very limited form of breakfast provision, but were not able to maximise its impact on a whole school basis or for the children who needed it most.

5. Providing schools with knowledge, advice and guidance and helping them consider their own unique circumstances at the implementation stage is key to a successful breakfast provision, and we would advocate that the Bill includes provision of appropriate support for schools. Support helps schools set up efficient provision that is cost effective and gives them as much value for money as possible in terms of staffing, food supply, and logistics support. This is then reinforced by providing ongoing support, advice and assistance for whenever schools meet barriers or difficulties with engaging pupils in breakfast. Tailored enrichment of the offer around breakfast, and support for schools to offer this, has been a particularly valuable element of the programme in terms of wider impacts around improved attendance and support for pupils’ emotional health and wellbeing. 96% of schools report that they have found the NSBP online support portal helpful and 100% have been satisfied with our network events and webinars.

6. A national approach: We know that schools really value being part of a national programme that collates and shares best practice, but that can also provide ongoing individual support to schools, so that they can maximise accessibility, uptake and impact of their breakfast provision. We have helped schools across the country to set up and improve their provision by facilitating a bespoke approach that considers and meets each school’s particular needs and circumstances, but shares knowledge and useful resources across the country, creating a community of NSBP schools that actively want to learn from each other. A national approach makes it easier to set clear expectations and ensure equity of provision so that a pupil in Cornwall gets the same quality of breakfast as a pupil in Newcastle. It also helps with quality assurance, easy sharing of knowledge and expertise with schools and enables comparable data collection processes so that impact can be monitored carefully and consistently across the country. We have also achieved significant economies of scale and efficiency with food ordering, supply and delivery.

7. Ensuring that breakfast provision reaches the pupils who need it most: The NSBP has been successful at working with schools to bespoke their provision to ensure that breakfast reaches the pupils who need it most. This has meant lots of creative work to identify and support pupils who need easy access to a school breakfast, without stigma. This inclusive approach, which leaves no child behind, has been crucial in maximising the impact of the NSBP for everyone. As we move towards a model of universal breakfast provision and an increasing focus on the provision of childcare through that provision, we need to ensure that a focus is maintained on ensuring that breakfast still reaches the pupils that need it the most. The focus on providing enrichment as well as food in breakfast provision is to be applauded but provision needs to be flexible in the way it is provided to reach different groups of children. A traditional ‘club’ should not be the only form of provision available to schools and we need to recognise the fact that providing different forms of breakfast provision may encourage children to move on to attend a breakfast club in time. The Bill wording therefore needs to enable flexibility of implementation. 76% of schools who had enrolment meetings to join the NSBP between July 2021 and June 2024 only provided a breakfast club, and no other form of provision, such as ‘grab and go’ or classroom based provision. In comparison, as of 1st May 2024, 71% of the primary schools the NSBP works with who completed data returns use multiple models to reach all pupils who need breakfast. Primary schools on the NSBP with only a breakfast club reach 60 pupils on average. This is double the number of pupils who were reached prior to joining through pre-existing breakfast clubs (the majority of which were charging.) However, primary schools on the NSBP as a whole reach 151 pupils on average. This illustrates the fact that the majority of primary schools are using multiple models or extended reach models to reach all the pupils who need breakfast, and they predominantly choose classroom or grab and go models. We are aware that the Early Adopter Scheme allows provision of breakfast within classrooms where these fall into the 30 minutes of childcare provisions, but we are concerned that breakfasts outside of these 30 minutes are not funded by the Scheme.

8. Different models of provision include schools who wish to offer breakfast to pupils who are late – this is often the case for those who particularly need breakfast as there are other complex issues in their life that affect attendance. By providing breakfast even when they are late, this often starts pupils on a journey of improving their punctuality – 90% of headteachers in our most recent survey agreed that the NSBP improved punctuality [4] . We are concerned that the current wording of the Bill only refers to "schools having a duty to provide breakfast before the start of the first school session on each school day" [5] which would mean some of these children could be missed if schools are not funded to offer any form of late breakfast provision. As schools order food in advance, it may also not make best use of resources to deny children who are late a breakfast that has already been prepared. We have seen so many children make the journey from being persistently late, to having breakfast when they arrive late and being better able to concentrate in school, to learning from that and then arriving at school earlier in order to have breakfast before lessons start, to then moving on to participating actively in the organisation of the breakfast provision, perhaps as a breakfast monitor. We need to facilitate the continuation of that journey of change in the exciting context of universal provision.

9. Enrichment of breakfast is also important in ensuring pupils who need a school breakfast receive the encouragement they need to take it up. Pupils in different circumstances will need different enrichment activities and approaches (e.g. SEND or socially anxious pupils requiring quieter spaces, pupils living further from school needing a model that allows a breakfast just before the start of the school day, pupils needing additional learning support given booster breakfasts.) The NSBP promotes and encourages schools to think deeply about this and to bespoke their school breakfast to meet the different needs of their school population and to keep their provision under review to ensure that it continues to be effective. As outlined above, schools need support to provide this enrichment and monitoring and quality assuring that incentivises this wider work.

10. We cannot overemphasise the importance of having a quality assurance expectation in the Bill regarding breakfast provision in order to monitor consistency, reach, success and impact but also to highlight where performance needs to be improved or where the needs of the most vulnerable pupils are not being met.

29th January 2025