19 January 2021

We start 2021 with some good news. We are delighted to report that we have now welcomed more than 500 additional schools into the Magic Breakfast family. These schools were previously part of the National School Breakfast Programme, which we are running in conjunction with Family Action for the Department for Education. The funding for the majority of schools in the Programme has now ended and so we have offered support to as many of those schools as we can who are keen to ensure all pupils at risk of hunger can continue to access a healthy breakfast.

This means we have now doubled the number of schools we are working with and tripled the number of children we are offering breakfasts to compared with 2020.

Of course, this makes huge demands on our resources, but our Fundraising Team have been working hard, and with help from all our generous supporters and successful campaigns, such as the Big Give and the i newspaper Christmas Appeal, we are ready to meet the challenge.

Facing another lockdown is a further challenge, but as during the last school closures we will be keeping breakfast going. Breakfast food continues to go to schools for them to distribute to their pupils. And Amazon, who since May last year have delivered over 2 million breakfasts for us, are continuing to support us with home deliveries.

We are very aware that Covid-19 has exacerbated food insecurity. Many of our partner schools have been reporting notable increases in poverty and hunger in their communities, which is why it is vital that we reach as many children as we can with healthy breakfast food.

Last year Magic Breakfast worked with 480 Primary, Secondary, ASL/Special Educational Needs Schools and Pupil Referral Units. This year we can support over 1,000. We are now offering breakfasts to up to 170,000 children every day!

Carly Tremblin, Deputy Headteacher at Alderbrook Primary School says

“What a difference a bagel makes! We continue to be absolutely delighted with the impact that breakfast bagels have on our entire school community. We have truly come to understand the cost of hunger and that’s why we are so grateful to Magic Breakfast for continuing to support our breakfast provision. We can now be confident that no child in our school is too hungry to learn.”

Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, and the determination of school staff, we were able to keep breakfast going during the first nationwide lockdown and we aim to do the same again. No child should ever be too hungry to learn, be that in school or when necessary, at home.