Free breakfast clubs to launch in 750 schools within weeks - helping kids in deprived areas

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Free breakfast clubs in primary schools will soon begin to help struggling families and kids held back by the scarring impact of poverty, Bridget Phillipson has said.

The Education Secretary told The Mirror the policy will ensure kids start the day with a nutritious breakfast “and are fuelled up and ready to learn”. On Monday Ms Phillipson will kick-start the scheme as she announces the first 750 schools across England to benefit from the free breakfast clubs.

From April the pilot will impact around 180,000 children, including 67,000 in the most deprived areas, before a national roll-out, the Department for Education said. Ms Phillipson said: "I promised free breakfast clubs to working families and I'm delivering."

She added: “I know just how many families are struggling at the moment and this will make a really big difference to supporting children's life chances.

“But I also grew up in a tough area, we didn't have it easy. I know just how scarring the impact of poverty can be on children and this will make a big difference in tackling the unfair disadvantage that holds back too many of our children in too many of our communities.”

The Cabinet minister said free breakfast clubs will be a “really important way of boosting attendance, attainment and children’s wellbeing” as well as saving parents up to £450 a year.

She said: “We’ve got big numbers of children living in poverty and this will mean children get a meal at the start of the day as well as that softer start to the day which is so important to their development.”

The pilot will allow the government to “test what works in different schools - both rural and urban, right across England, larger schools and smaller schools," she said. And she promised the first 750 schools to benefit would be spread out across all nine English regions.

But she declined to give a date on when the scheme would be rolled out nationally, saying it was subject to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill going through Parliament.

As part of the legislation, measures will also target the cost of school uniforms, by limiting the branded items schools require parents to buy their children. Ms Phillipson said: “I believe that children can look really smart at school but it shouldn't cost parents the earth.”

Ms Phillipson also said she was “proud” to be leading a major government taskforce on child poverty - expected to report back in the spring - alongside Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall.

The scale of the challenge is huge with experts warning one in three children will still be in poverty in England by 2030 - even with economic growth - unless there is targeted support.

The Education Secretary admitted child poverty is “already heading in the wrong direction”, adding: “The numbers are rising in England and will continue to rise.”

She said: “That presents an enormous challenge. Not least in the context of the really terrible inheritance the Tories left behind in the public finances and the state of the economy, so we do face some really tough choices about how we lift more children out of poverty.

“It is essential that we act because we're held back as a country when so many of our children are growing up in poverty and the impact that has on their life chances.”

But Labour MPs are continuing to push the government to amend or axe the two-child benefit limit - a Tory-era austerity policy blamed for trapping children in poverty.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said reversing the measure, which restricts Child Tax Credits and Universal Credit to the first two children, could lift 540,000 kids out of absolute poverty at a cost of £2.5billion.

Pressed on the two-child benefit limit, Ms Phillipson said the taskforce will consider “all social security measures and all aspects of Universal Credit”.

She said: “I'm deeply concerned about the big increases in the number of children in our country growing up in poverty. Social security is obviously an important part of that but I think it goes wider and deeper and to some really deep seated problems and challenges in our country and we have to look at all of that together.”

She added: “Like so many Labour MPs I came into politics because I want all children to have the best possible start in life and poverty holds back too many of our children. Crucially it holds back our country too.

“We won't succeed as a nation in the way that we should if too many of our children and their families are not able to play their full contribution because of poverty.”