Schools get a Boost with Breakfast Clubs from the DfE

The Department for Education recently announced that more than 1,170 schools will benefit from a £26 million investment to provide children in deprived areas with a healthy and nutritious breakfast.

Education secretary Damian Hinds said: “A healthy breakfast can help fuel children’s concentration so they can get the most out of their school day.

“Children only get one chance at an education and they deserve the best, whatever their background. That is why we are giving more pupils in some of the country’s most disadvantaged areas the chance to go to a breakfast club.

“Paid for by the government’s soft drinks levy, this investment will help raise education standards further and will make sure young people have happy, healthy childhoods.”

The benefits of this are obvious and scientifically backed. Schools offering a breakfast to children that don’t receive one at home can experience several beneficial outcomes.

Such schools observe boosted levels of punctuality, as well as enhanced social development and pupils mixing between social groups. Pupils consuming a suitable morning meal results in higher levels of concentration, contributing significantly to attainment levels.

For a lot of schools, venturing into the realm of breakfast clubs is treading into unknown territory. The composition of breakfast clubs can differ greatly to that of procedures that exist within normal school operating hours and this can lead to confusions on where accountability lies.

After years of experience providing sign in and registration solutions for schools, we’ve learned a thing or two about what works for pre-school activities.

Often, schools can overlook safeguarding procedures for breakfast and afterschool clubs, however, this is just as necessary for extracurricular activity as it is during normal school hours. Maintaining a record of who attends the breakfast club is essential in a potential evacuation scenario. Achieving an understanding of those who are attending breakfast club will also assist in measuring the impact that the club is having on those particular pupils.

Obtaining important pupil information is key to getting the most out of breakfast clubs; knowing who the regular latecomers are in school will aid in unlocking who to target.

With ClubReg, a dedicated club management tool from InVentry, you can setup clubs in minutes. It allows you to assign students from your central database to specific clubs such as breakfast clubs and sign them in on arrival and out when they leave. You can then use the data to report on frequency of visits and link this back to performance in your MIS.

For more information, visit our dedicated ClubReg webpage or contact us at info@inventry.co.uk.