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   HebrideanHecate (hebrideanhecate@spinster.xyz)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 21:22:03 JST HebrideanHecate

   https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/feb/16/we-cant-feed-pupils-for-60p-say-schools-in-blow-to-labour-breakfast-club-pledge

   The government’s flagship plan to set up free breakfast clubs in all primary schools is running into trouble as headteachers say that initial funding is inadequate and charities with experience of providing food in schools demand more flexibility over how they can be run.

   Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson sees the provision of free breakfast clubs in all primary schools as vital to breaking what she calls the “unfair link between background and success” in education. Numerous academic studies show that a good breakfast improves attendance and pupil performance.

   But with the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, considering further spending cuts for major departments, concerns are growing among headteachers, unions and charities that the plans will not be properly funded and will lack the flexibility required to be successful.

   This weekend, the independent publication Schools Week highlighted how some headteachers in primaries, while enthusiastic about the overall aims, were refusing to take part in an “early adopter” pilot scheme for 750 volunteer schools because only 60p was being provided by the government per pupil.

   Paul Bertram, headteacher at Buxworth Primary School, told Schools Week he had talked with governors about taking part in the pilot but they concluded they would be left with a large financial shortfall. “We discussed it as a governing body and we just couldn’t afford to run at a loss. If this is the best they can offer, they are going to struggle with putting the policy nationally across the whole of the country.”

   • KeepTakingTheSoma likes this.
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     KeepTakingTheSoma (keeptakingthesoma@spinster.xyz)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 21:27:28 JST KeepTakingTheSoma

     in reply to
     @HebrideanHecate I have mixed feelings about breakfast in schools. I've run several breakfast clubs which are just an extension of paid childcare for working parents. But the idea that school provides breakfast on the assumption that parents can't/won't do it for their own children is a nasty tentacle of the *the state is the parent now* culture.
     
     We know that there have always been families that are negligent, but are we now to set the bar so low that we assume all families are negligent or that we treat all families as being at the lowest setting so the negligent ones don't feel bad?
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     HebrideanHecate (hebrideanhecate@spinster.xyz)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 21:33:53 JST HebrideanHecate

     in reply to

     • KeepTakingTheSoma

     @KeepTakingTheSoma Yes, I do know what you mean.

     KeepTakingTheSoma likes this.