17th March, 2016

The Chancellor’s Budget 2016 includes a very welcome announcement that revenue from the new soft drinks industry levy “will provide £10 million funding a year to expand breakfast clubs in up to 1,600 schools starting from September 2017, to ensure more children have a nutritious breakfast as a healthy start to their school day”.

Magic Breakfast charity is the lead provider of nutritious breakfast food to schoolchildren in England and was the sole winner, in 2014, of the Department for Education’s Lot 3 tender to set up new breakfast clubs in 184 schools in areas of social deprivation.

Carmel McConnell MBE, founder and Chief Executive of Magic Breakfast, said: “Magic Breakfast is delighted that The Chancellor has allocated additional funding to expand breakfast provision in schools. With half a million UK pupils arriving at school hungry or malnourished, this is an essential boost for children’s health and educational outcomes”.

Speaking at the launch of the new White Paper on Education, The Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, said: "We are delighted to be able to support the work of getting more breakfasts into schools... with more children benefitting". 

Notes

About Magic Breakfast:

· Magic Breakfast is a registered charity (number: 1102510) providing free, healthy breakfasts to over 23,500 UK children every school day.

· The charity works with schools where over 35% of children are eligible for Free School Meals, or with Ever 6 FSM, helping them to establish breakfast provision that targets every hungry child. A hungry child cannot concentrate and will miss out on the most important lessons, taught in the morning, if not given anything to eat.

· There are more than 480 Magic Breakfast partner schools – primary, secondary, SEN schools and Pupil Referral Units, but we have nearly 300 schools on our waiting list requesting urgent food aid.

· Each “magic” breakfast, of cereal, porridge, bagels and fresh fruit juice, costs the charity just 22p thanks to the generosity of the charity’s food and funding partners.

· The goal of Magic Breakfast is to ensure that, by 2020, there are no children in the UK starting lessons too hungry to learn.

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