EmailHeadteachers and senior doctors are calling for needy children to receive a free breakfast at school after a Guardian survey found almost half of teachers have brought food in for pupils who arrive at school with empty stomachs.
Four out of five teachers (83%) see pupils who are hungry in the morning and 55% said up to a quarter of pupils arrive having not eaten enough. More than half say the number of children involved has been rising in the past year or two, which have seen some families hit hard by the recession, unemployment and benefit cuts.
In the survey of 591 teachers across Britain who belong to the online Guardian Teacher Network, 49% said they have taken food or fruit into school to give to children who have not had breakfast. Almost one in five (17%) have given such pupils money out of their own pockets to buy lunch.
Almost four in five (78%) said they wanted children from low-income families to get a free breakfast on arrival at school, just as some already receive a free lunch.
The Royal College of GPs, the National Association of Head Teachers and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health are urging ministers to examine the viability of ensuring that the 1.3 million children in England who qualify for free school meals also get a free breakfast.
Dr Clare Gerada, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said free breakfasts would help tackle health problems in children related to poverty and poor diet, such as anaemia and stunted growth, boost their self-esteem and narrow the social class divide in schools.
"It is sad to hear of so many children being hungry and that lack of family resources appears to be a major contributor to this. As a GP I see poverty presenting in my consulting room on a daily basis and it is important that all governments address child poverty as a matter of urgency," she said.
"Providing free school breakfast to those eligible for free school meals would be a start. Though clearly it would not address the underlying issue of poverty, [it] would at least mean that children from poor families would not jeopardise their chances of learning."
Asked to identify what alerted them to pupils being hungry in the morning, teachers in the survey said lack of concentration (91%), tiredness (86%), pupils' behaviour (72%) and children saying they feel unwell (63%).
Steve Iredale, president of the National Association of Head Teachers, who is head of a primary school in Barnsley, said: "The survey results are quite shocking. I can believe that it's a growing problem. I've seen it in my school. A child who's arriving at school hungry and tired can't learn. Free school breakfasts could help tackle that. They would be a way forward."
The pupils affected are from families who are just above the eligibility criteria for free school meals, even though their household income is low, added Iredale, who represents 28,000 heads, deputies and assistants.
But he stressed that practical issues for schools, such as the need to pay staff to provide breakfasts and the lack of kitchens in some schools, needed to be addressed before schools could take on any new responsibility. Free school meals have existed since 1945 and about 1.3 million children in England receive one, at a cost of £500m a year. The Child Poverty Action Group claims that 700,000 pupils in England alone who live in poverty miss out because eligibility is too tight.
The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is so concerned about hungry pupils that he is preparing to fund the charity Magic Breakfast to provide free breakfasts at 50 schools in the poorest parts of the capital for three years. The money will come from the Mayor's Fund for London, which is mainly funded by donations from City firms. Chris Robinson, the fund's chief executive officer, said recently that he was "impressed" by Magic Breakfast's work. "They are meeting a real need in a practical way," he said.
The teachers' survey also found that:
• 55% said up to a quarter of pupils arrived hungry; 28% said up to a half of their children did; 8% said it was up to three-quarters; and 2% said it was every pupil.
• 72% identified lack of parenting skills as a reason for the growing number of pupils going hungry; 58% said family health or social problems; 44% said lack of family time; 41% cited benefit cuts and 35% said cost-of-living pressures.
• 20% said the increase in pupil hunger they had seen was "dramatic", while 68% said it was "moderate".
• 89% said the lack of breakfast for some pupils affected the teaching of other pupils in the class; only 4% disagreed.
• 59% said children were sometimes taken out of class due to illness or behaviour and given something to eat and 13% said that occurred regularly.
Dr Hilary Cass, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said children who do not eat before coming to school "are also much more likely to tuck into unhealthy snacks during break times, which is no substitute for a good breakfast and can play havoc with children's blood sugar levels and their overall diets".
Parents, not just schools, needed to be involved in "a concerted effort on all fronts" to ensure children have food at the start of the day, Cass added. Given school breakfast clubs' proven benefits for pupils' learning and behaviour "we need to look seriously at how successful models such as these can be replicated", she said.
Magic Breakfast provides free food in 200 of the 1,000 primary schools in England in which more than half of pupils receive free school meals. It is delivering 20% more food to schools than a year ago, said Carmel McConnell, the charity's founder.
"Need is escalating. We're being overtaken by need on the ground. Schools are asking us for more of the cereal, bagels, porridge and orange juice we provide. When I ask schools why they need more food, they say more pupils are coming in hungry. When I ask them why that is, they say there are more parents who have lost their jobs in the last year," said McConnell.
"It's a scar on our society, the sheer volume of schoolchildren coming into school who are missing half a day's learning because of hunger and malnourishment," she added. "How can we talk about being a rich and responsible society when we've got so many children arriving at school too hungry to learn?"
Every pupil at a maintained primary school in Wales has been offered a free school breakfast since 2004, when the Labour-only government was led by first minister Rhodi Morgan, irrespective of need and their family's circumstances. Some 1,052 primary schools – 75% of the total – now provide them, and the proportion having of pupils having a free breakfast at least once a week has risen steadily to 36.4%, a spokesman for the Welsh government said. The initiative costs the cardiff administration £11.3m in this school year but that is due to rise to £12.7m in 2012-13.
"Breakfast has long been recognised as the most important meal of the day and evidence shows that a healthy breakfast is linked to better health, concentration and behaviour in our schools. Associated costs have risen each year, which reflects the increasing numbers of young people participating in and benefitting from this successful and popular scheme", added the spokesman.
Ministers in England have no plans to introduce free school breakfasts.
Pupils who receive free school meals only get fed at lunchtime. The Department for Education (DfE) does not intend to extend eligibility to outside the school day but is happy for individual schools or local councils to use their own resources to bring in free breakfasts for needy pupils.
A DfE spokeswoman said: "We know how important it is for children to have a healthy breakfast.
"Many schools provide breakfast clubs as part of their extended services, which can improve children's attendance and motivation and provide a good opportunity to promote healthy eating among children and young people."
Comments
19 June 2012 3:17PM
A disgrace...but not in the slightest bit surprising given this Government's constant two faced approach:
Rhetoric: want to cut poverty, want to improve the prospects of children from poor backgrounds, reduce number of teachers, etc
Reality: cut EMA, cut benefits including working tax credits, cut SureStart, reduce funding to LEA schools (whilst increasing funds to generally middle class faith/free schools), etc
Bringing in food/giving money to the kids...clearly his is the not the picture of caring teachers the Government want portrayed....much better to cut their pensions, demoralise teachers, have them jump through some very useless hoops (which if they improved standards would be a good thing but invariably they are hoops invented by people who don't know what they are talking about)
19 June 2012 3:19PM
oops....reduce number of teachers should have been in reality section not rhetoric!
19 June 2012 3:24PM
Dont have kids you cant feed!
19 June 2012 3:25PM
"Four out of five teachers (83%) see pupils who are hungry in the morning and 55% said up to a quarter of pupils arrive having not eaten enough."
But but but the bankers need more Billions of Euros to lend to themselves that we have to pay back. Give them more money that'll help the situation!
19 June 2012 3:26PM
This is what you get if you vote Tory ... fekk me, I hate the home counties tossers who dominate this country.
19 June 2012 3:26PM
Sounds like the criteria is wrong then
19 June 2012 3:27PM
This has nothing to do with schools and everything to do with poor parenting.
Child licensing, now.
19 June 2012 3:27PM
Circumstance change. Adults fall ill. People get made redundant. Cheap, spiteful comment.
19 June 2012 3:28PM
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19 June 2012 3:31PM
Okay. And now - what about these kids who are already alive and at school? Can we address that question?
19 June 2012 3:31PM
Hmmmm.... I'm all for blaming this truly awful government for most things, but a bowl of (for eg) own-brand weetabix costs about 10p. Are we saying that parents aren't giving their kids breakfast because they haven't got 10p? Anyone with children knows that they just don't want to eat at 7.30 am. I virtually have to force-feed my 12 and 9 year olds. But of course they get hungry a little later, when their digestive systems have woken up.
I agree that breakfast clubs are a good idea, but, frankly, parents who say they can't afford a bowl of cereal are stupid, selfish or lazy.
19 June 2012 3:32PM
The headline finding is surely that three-quarters (72%) of these cases are because of piss-poor parenting, not lack of money to pay for two slices of toast or some cereal and milk in the morning. This isn't a coalition cuts story - it's decades of lazy, irresponsible arsehole parents who find it easier to send their children out without a proper breakfast and give them money for chips and chicken on their way home.
19 June 2012 3:32PM
I salute the teachers who end up bringing food in to feed pupils but it will tend to make the situation worse, with feckless parents taking advantage of concientous teachers.
19 June 2012 3:32PM
The parents will have enough money for their fags, beer, dope, XBoxes and Sky. Child poverty isn't about whatever percentage of the average wage household income is. It is about having parents who don't bother to give you a decent breakfast, don't care where you are, have more children than they can afford. It is about knowing how to use the playstation or sky remote but being unable to hold a knife and fork or communicate properly when you arrive in reception class.
Much better to fine or prosecute the parents of children who arrive at school hungry. I had heard we were allegedly heading towards the nanny state, but now the state is the breakfast provider in place of parents?
19 June 2012 3:33PM
Big Society is working!
19 June 2012 3:33PM
It's also likely to have been a problem prior to the current governments election. I think it's a bigger problem than just the current Government (who still deserve criticism).
19 June 2012 3:33PM
It feels like we have slipped back a century, sometimes.
We need to feed our children and teach them the need to feed their own, one day.
19 June 2012 3:33PM
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19 June 2012 3:34PM
This is beyond what even Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher managed.
19 June 2012 3:34PM
I'm quite into the idea of the state directly feeding poor kids. You could perhaps extend it to other some essentials (san pro and toiletries, for instance).
One of my parents spent his bit of child benefit on alcohol and gambling. The other hoarded hers (she's still effectively got it 30 years later). As a result, few clothes, life in an repaired home without electricity and decent water supply etc. Food if I got it and cooked it myself. And so on.
But one thing I did always get without having to worry or do anything to make sure it was there was a school lunch.
19 June 2012 3:34PM
Don't be daft. You may well have had a good job 5 years ago when your children were born.
Unless you meant to add "Dont have kids you cant feed! And also, if you don't have a crystal ball and can foresee that you will be untouched by a global economic turndown"
Back off to the 6th form common room with you.
19 June 2012 3:34PM
Thatcherites are here again when those kids are a bit older they can move into cardboard citys and live on cardboard pizza that they paid for by mugging tories and the world turns.
19 June 2012 3:34PM
I don't think I ever had breakfast before school once I started secondary school, I would rather have an extra few minutes in bed.
Until fairly recently I was a secondary school teacher and it was clear that most hungry students were just lazy like me and put sleep before breakfast, then quite a high proportion of students spent their breakfast money on sweets. While breakfasts clubs are a good idea, especially working parents who need to leave the house fairly early, an issue is that most of the food served at breakfast clubs is substandard, bacon baps, sausage rolls and high sugar cereals, eating that doesn't solve any problems at all.
Never mind buying food for pupils, I used to have to buy them uniforms as the ones they owned were both dirty and falling apart, I even had a pupil who had to come to school in hi scruffy clothes and then change in to his uniform once he arrived as his parents couldn't be trusted to wash it and he would have to rely on a laundrette service at eleven years old.
19 June 2012 3:34PM
OK, it is disgraceful for the government. But government is led by politicians, people we heartily distrust and yet seem willing to wait on their goodwill and sense of duty when it comes to feeding children? What does that say about our society? Forget the politicians, just do it. There is no need for hunger in British schools, regardless of government policy or idiocy.
19 June 2012 3:35PM
Civilized states offer free meals to school children.
Uncivilized ones rather buy more nukes or update existing ones and let children go hungry.
19 June 2012 3:35PM
I'd like to know whether
a) the parents concerned simply do not have sufficient income to feed their children properly, or
b) they cannot afford to feed their children after paying for fags, booze and Sky TV. or
c) they can afford breakfast for their children, but can't be bothered to get out of bed to do so
without this information, we cannot solve the problem
19 June 2012 3:35PM
Circumstances change for some people, yes, but plenty of others have children knowing full well that they don't have the means to support them. What do you have to say about those people?
19 June 2012 3:35PM
I like how emboldening your comment enhances your logical conjecture. Again, poverty occurs without it being the fault of the individual.
God help you should you ever find bad luck brings destitution to your family.
19 June 2012 3:36PM
I am a cheap spiteful person so its to be expected.
19 June 2012 3:36PM
There's no such thing as a "free" breakfast.
Someone else is being forced to pay for it via taxation. And if they balk they'll be told "you don't care for kids", "you're unpatriotic" and "you don't have a heart"...
19 June 2012 3:37PM
i'm stationed in a developing country and can see (and understand) why we have child hunger here.
but child hunger in the u.k.? that really caught me off guard. if the facts are correct and we can't feed our children then whats the point of being great britain?
19 June 2012 3:37PM
I have better, more constructive things to do with my time other than spending it vilifying people. Daily Mail culture.
19 June 2012 3:38PM
The same question to you. What do you think of people who have children when they can't support them at the time of having them?
19 June 2012 3:38PM
Ok so there are feckless parents, is the solution to punish their kids?
19 June 2012 3:38PM
I was waiting for the bus yesterday and this woman came out of the shop with her child, thrust a bag of crisp at it with the words 'here's your breakfast' whilst she proceeded to unwrap a pacet of cigarettes. Says it all.
19 June 2012 3:38PM
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19 June 2012 3:39PM
"Four out of five teachers (83%) see pupils who are hungry in the morning and 55% said up to a quarter of pupils arrive having not eaten enough."
And what percentage is due to genuine poverty and what due to poor parenting. There was some tosser walking a child to school this morning in Reading smoking a spliff.
19 June 2012 3:39PM
Another CIF thread in which some will blame the Tories, some will blame Labour, some will blame the parents, some will blame 30 years of economic neo-liberalism.
Oh man, pass the popcorn.
19 June 2012 3:39PM
Civilised parents feed their children.
Loving your children means making them the top priority in your life.
This research makes clear that poor parenting, rather than poverty, is the biggest cause of this problem.
19 June 2012 3:39PM
Is this Britain today ?
How much was spent sailing a couple of boats down the thames ?
I hope the corgies do better.
19 June 2012 3:40PM
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19 June 2012 3:40PM
Many schools do have morning breakfast clubs, but this should be rolled out as the norm. Not only is it a travesty that children are going hungry in this country, but the evidence that a good healthy diet improves learning is overwhelming. Two birds, one stone.
19 June 2012 3:41PM
what an absolute scandal....thought thiswas 2012 not 1912
19 June 2012 3:41PM
Do I have to believe that the percentage of kids quoted are arriving hungry at school because despite their parents working or being in receipt of public monies they do not have enough money to feed their children? Please! I might be gullible but that is stretching things too far.
There is no evidence in the article that it is lack of money. Actually the hungry data is hearsay data, but even allowing the hungry kids theme to be true, all I can say is, congratulations, you have managed to create a tremendous parenting deficit.
Are British parents so totally abject, so totally irresponsible, they don't feed their kids properly? That's not economic poverty that's something else altogther. 'They are also likely to tuck in to unhealthy snacks at break time..' Now there is a give away. Snacks are expensive, aren't they?
I know it fits the popular narrative, but, is it too much to ask for a minimum of data and a slightly less infantile analysis?
19 June 2012 3:42PM
As I suspected, there is no circumstance in which you would advocate that parents take responsibility for having children. This rather invalidates your criticism of the previous poster which hinged entirely on the fact that a minority of people might be in a situation entirely beyond their control. It's a straightforward misrepresentation on your part using a tiny anomalous minority to support your position that pretty much everyone should be given more no matter what.
19 June 2012 3:42PM
This is awful and backed up by friends who are teachers who often complain about children coming into school unfed. However it has nothing to do with lack of money or "poverty". To feed a child a breakfast costs virtually nothing, the problem is parenting and the complete breakdown of the family. My teacher friends also often complain that when they visit the homes of the children, the parents (more usually parent +1 ) are still in bed in the afternoon and the house is in a mess but complete with 50inch TV, Xbox, Sky+ etc.
19 June 2012 3:42PM
It is bad parenting that's causing this, as a kid if times were tough we had porridge, cheap and good for you. If I refused breakfast I went hungry and you learn pretty soon to eat your porridge.
I appreciate sometimes its hard to feed kids, due to time, money and them being fussy buggers but if you cannot do the most basic task in childcare you should not be a parent.
19 June 2012 3:42PM
Are you in favour of punishing the parents?
19 June 2012 3:42PM
I recently helped out on a school trip. A 7 year old boy, whippet-thin and in the lowest 10 % of height distribution, wolfed down three sandwiches, a yoghurt, an apple, a chocolate cereal bar and two bananas. It was obvious to all the grim faced teachers and helpers that he hadn't been fed since the previous evening, more likely the previous lunch. School knew about his circumstances, duly logged and sure Social Services also aware. Assume that parents had more than economic problems. Still broke your heart.
19 June 2012 3:43PM
the troll concensus appears to be "So what if there are hungry children? I don't have to worry because my morality get-out-clause is to blame the parents."