Breakfast: Fuel for firmer foundations
Next week the Scottish Government will announce the 2025/26 Scottish Budget. This budget, the last before May’s election, will outline how the Government is choosing to prioritise public spending. The Government will demonstrate to the nation what priorities they have for Scots and what foundations they will lay for the future of Scotland. At Magic Breakfast, we believe that it is vital for these foundations to start with breakfast.
School breakfasts, like the over 300,000 we deliver to our partner schools every day, can raise educational attainment, reduce absences, build healthier learning environments, and protect young Scots right to learn – ensuring children and young people are nourished, empowered and thriving.
One pupil told us that that ‘attending breakfast club makes me feel happy and ready to learn’.
School breakfast provision is a well-evidenced intervention that supports children’s learning, health, and long-term economic outcomes. In Scotland, where 1 in 4 children live in poverty, breakfast provision plays an important role in supporting children to reach their full potential. Sitting alongside a range of other interventions, school breakfast can play an important role in growing a strong economy built on a healthy, skilled and educated workforce. For every £1 invested in breakfast provision, it generates £50 for the wider economy. Breakfast also creates better wellbeing outcomes for children and young people with 92% of our partner schools linking breakfast provision to an increase in emotional and mental health. At the same time 9 in 10 partner schools see breakfast positively impacting attendance and punctuality. These benefits for children and young people, their families, and the whole of Scotland inspires us to campaign for change to improve national policy for breakfast provision. As highlighted in our joint articles with Children in Scotland and the Poverty Alliance, our Breakfast Can’t Wait campaign is doing just that. Backed by the general public, Magic Breakfast wants to see a free school breakfast offered to pupils from the start of primary school to the end of secondary school.
Indeed, when asked in an independent poll last September, 63 percent of people in Scotland said school breakfasts should be offered to pupils of all ages.
In the run up to the Scottish Budget, we’ve provided all parties at Holyrood with a series of recommendations for how next week’s Budget can create a path to universal provision.
Building on the success of Bright Start Breakfasts (which is delivering £3m of investment into breakfast this year), our recommendations go further. Magic Breakfast has costed proposals which would roll out universal breakfasts for all students in more schools, either based on deprivation in council areas or free school meals eligibility in specific schools.
Next week’s budget comes under tough financial circumstances. Magic Breakfast understands this which is why our recommendations are affordable and sustainable. To deliver universal provision from P1-S6 would cost £32 million and our proposals for the next step on Scotland’s road map to this aim would cost between £7 million and £26 million.
As a nation we are only 5 months away from an election, but this Parliament still has major decisions to make over the lives of Scots. Next week’s Budget must set out a path towards universal breakfast provision which ensures that fewer children from Selkirk to Sumburgh go to school hungry.
If you agree, why not write to your MSPs and ask them to show their support for better breakfast provision for young Scots.
