At our January club meeting, one of our members spoke about funding challenges being faced by schools running breakfast clubs during the pandemic, prompted by an article she had read in The Guardian.
The main purpose of a breakfast club is to provide a safe, secure environment before school, where children can have a decent breakfast with their friends. They also play an important role in providing before-school childcare for families where parents work or need to get other children to different schools or childcare settings.
The benefits of children having a good breakfast include:
- Improved concentration
- Improved attendance and punctuality
- Better behaviour
- Improved attainment and achievement at school.
SI Medway and Maidstone support Byron Primary School in Gillingham, which is in one of the deprived areas in Medway. The school has been open throughout lockdown with an average of 80 critical worker children attending school each day and 10 vulnerable children. When the school is fully operational, they would usually have about 40 attending their breakfast club from 7.40am – 8.40am. The cost is normally £4 a day which includes breakfast, as it must be self-financing. Currently they have up to 15 attending breakfast club each day and five of these are being funded by the School.
Medway and Maidstone Soroptimists donated £100 to the Byron Primary School for the breakfast club. Head Teacher, Jon Carthy said, ‘Thank you for the generous donation for our Breakfast Club in these difficult times. It is both very thoughtful and much needed. We will think very carefully about how to use this money with our most vulnerable of children’.