23 December 2019

Well that went quickly! Another year has flown by and we are pleased to report that Magic Breakfast has continued to grow in 2019, tackling classroom hunger in more schools across the country.

We are now providing breakfasts every school day to 48,400 children. In its early years Magic Breakfast focused on primary schools so it is satisfying to see many secondary schools now joining as partner schools. Leeds University recently provided some interesting research which clearly linked regular breakfast eating to improved GCSE results.

Politics has been hard to avoid this year, so we made sure our message to Government was clear. In September we released a policy document and we have been working with MPs across the parties. We held a parliamentary breakfast at the Palace of Westminster hosted by Cabinet Minister Nicky Morgan MP and attended by MPs including Angela Rayner, who was Shadow Education Secretary at the time. Just before the General Election, children from one of our London Partner Schools delivered our message to Number 10 in the form of 1,000 postcards written by children from our partner schools.

Messages from the children included, ‘I like to eat breakfast at school because I don’t get breakfast at my house because my mum needs more money’.

And ‘I like to eat breakfast at school because it really starts my day when I am extremely hungry so Mr Prime Minister please give others bagels’.

 

We couldn’t do any of this without our wonderful supporters, from generous individuals to big corporate organisations.

We have some great restaurant partners who help with funding, but also provide disadvantaged children with the opportunity to visit their restaurants, learn about healthy eating and enjoy the treat of an extra special breakfast. The Dishoom takeover was a huge hit. Children from 3 local schools were invited into the Dishoom restaurant in King’s Cross for a fabulous morning, making roti and trying new foods.

Then there were the fun, unexpected moments, such as an invitation to a Metallica gig to receive a generous donation from the band, or children practising their SATs papers with the actor Russell Tovey. And, right before the end of term, a very famous Secret Santa funded holiday cereals and porridge for 1,000 children in a number of our partner schools, as well as making a very generous donation which will fund term-time breakfast provision for over 1,000 children throughout 2020. (Thank you James Corden!).  

It all added up to an exciting and satisfying year.

Sadly, we are all too aware of the increasing numbers of children living in poverty, at risk of hunger. We repeatedly hear from schools stories of children arriving hungry and malnourished with no energy for the school day. It is heartening then to hear from teachers the positive impact our breakfast provision makes, the improvements in children’s behaviour, attendance and wellbeing.

One of our partner schools recently shared this:

‘One family who often turned up for school without breakfast would regularly say they felt unwell or wouldn't be able to concentrate in class. They are benefitting hugely from having a regular breakfast and are more alert, switched on to learning and far more settled in class.’

That is why we continue to work towards ending classroom hunger.

We are proud of what we’ve achieved this year and look forward to doing even more in 2020