The Impact of Breakfast Clubs on Pupil Attendance and Punctuality

Although the provision of meals for pupils in schools has been a feature of the English education system since 1906, the concept of breakfast provision via schools was until recently given little attention across the United Kingdom. Consequently, the provision of a meal in UK schools has almost exclusively been restricted to lunch. In contrast to the slow development of interest in school breakfast provision in the United Kingdom, other countries have been providing morning meal programmes for a relatively long time and more research has been undertaken abroad evaluating the impact of school breakfast provision. The following section will discuss research completed to date in more detail. However, it was largely positive research findings from abroad that began to be noticed in this country. As a result the provision of breakfast for school pupils started to attract interest in the 1990s.