Breakfast Clubs: A 'How to' Guide
- Published 3rd Jan 2000
- Category: Food, Play and School Inclusion
Out-of-school hours provision for children is a developing area. Many schools now offer all sorts of activities for their pupils either before lessons begin, during lunch breaks or at the end of the school day. Some schools are responding to the needs of parents whose working hours are longer than the school day. Some are looking for new and fun ways to help children learn and to support them in their studies. Others are looking for ways to improve their pupils’ physical and emotional health and to promote healthy eating. This guide is about breakfast clubs. As the name suggests, these are a type of before-school provision. Breakfast clubs can take many forms. They can be based in schools or in local community settings, where they may support a small number of schools. They can be run by school staff, including school caterers, or outside staff employed to manage both before and after-school provision, or volunteers who sometimes are pupils’ parents. And of course, the children themselves can be encouraged to get involved and help run the club. Typically the clubs last for about an hour and whilst not all provide food, many do. It is this diversity of breakfast clubs which means they have considerable potential to help schools meet the different and specific
needs of their pupils. We hope the practical advice contained in this ‘How To’ guide, which includes case illustrations of different types of breakfast clubs, will be useful to anyone thinking of either starting a breakfast club or offering new things through their existing club.
About this report
This research report was written by Cathy Street and Peter kenway and is the product of a collaboration between the New Policy Institute, Kellogg’s and Education Extra.