21 May 2025

Free breakfast is not enough

It’s time for the government to step up: Britain’s children need high-quality food to thrive.

Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

During the 20 years I’ve been campaigning for better food in schools we’ve had some big successes, but there’s still an alarmingly long way to go. Where we fall down, again and again, is with the huge misunderstanding that being full is the same as being nourished. And the current case in point? Universal breakfast clubs.

Let me start by saying the ongoing roll-out of free breakfast clubs across England is great. It shows we have a government that is starting to understand that good, nutritious food at school is essential, and that a decent breakfast puts kids in the best possible position to thrive. Done right, these clubs have the ability to transform the school day for the children who attend.

But not all breakfast clubs are created equal. We need to have the right standards in place to ensure that all breakfast clubs are serving food that not only fills them up, but that will also help them learn. These standards don’t need to be complicated: we just need clear, simple guidance that creates a level playing field for all school food providers and, crucially, for all children, regardless of where they live.

My School Dinners campaign back in 2005 came to fruition because kids up and down the UK were being fed unhealthy, often heavily processed food, and there wasn’t a single standard, guideline or law in place to protect their health. We were a country that had standards in place for dog food, but not for what we feed our children at school 190 days of the year.

We fought hard, and Labour introduced the School Food Standards, revolutionising the school dinners system and empowering all the wonderful cooks and kitchen staff with better budgets and better guidance.

But the sad reality is that those standards haven’t been properly updated since, and when it comes to breakfast, they’re totally inadequate. They don’t focus on the right things – and not in nearly enough detail – to ensure a nutritious breakfast is offered. All this is made worse still by the fact that we don’t have anything in place to make sure schools are meeting the standards we do have. And we know that only what gets measured gets managed.

The food environment in Britain doesn’t make healthy choices easy. Think about the breakfasts in your average supermarket. When you walk down the cereal aisle, there aren’t many truly nutritious options on offer, and there’s a lot of confusing messaging. I can count on one hand the number of cereals on sale that any decent nutritionist would recommend for kicking off a kid’s day. You may as well be perusing the cake aisle, they’re that full of sugar.

Without clear mandatory standards, it’s totally understandable that school cooks and kitchens wanting to nourish their pupils might struggle. In these circumstances it’s hard, as parents, to put our faith in these clubs.

Serving kids a poor breakfast undermines their school day – if they’re not fed food that nourishes them, they’re not in the best position to learn, so this is a real missed opportunity. It has a wider impact, too. It risks worsening the childhood health crisis that’s already crippling our NHS. For those from poorer backgrounds, who are more likely to rely on school services such as breakfast clubs, it’s another brick stacked against them, and undermines the beautiful universalism we’ve been promised. The pervasive rhetoric that “any breakfast is better than no breakfast” is just not right, and implies that our more vulnerable should settle for less.

Giving our children low-quality food with little to no nutritional value is indefensible. Every single child, no matter their background, deserves decent food. If our school system does not get this right, rather than breaking down barriers to opportunity – as the government promises – it risks reinforcing them.

There is no point rolling out free universal breakfast clubs without putting appropriate standards and procedures in place first to make sure they are properly serving our kids’ needs. Universal school breakfast clubs have so much potential. The impact could be hugely positive and wide-reaching. If the Department for Education sets and enforces standards, every parent and caregiver could be confident that when their child attends that club, they are receiving a decent, nutritious, balanced meal. This could be life-changing for a lot of families.

The better the offer, the more kids and parents will love it, the more they’ll use it and, in turn, the better the outcomes will be. We will see the positive effects in our children’s health, attendance, academic success and well-being.

It seems to me that as we finally put much-needed investment into school food, there is an opportunity to redraw the system, not further fuel its challenges. We should be asking ourselves: in a perfect world, what would a national school food strategy look like? Imagine a set of inspirational standards that focused on a healthier, more sustainable future – think seasonality, championing local growers and suppliers, reducing food waste, utilising new technologies to plan and innovate – and the difference those standards could make.

The school dinners game, like any game, needs a set of rules. It’s time for the government to step up and take our school food standards to the place they need to be in 2025. This is for the health of our future generations. For all of our children.