I cannot start the day without eating a bowl of cereal. Good, slow release carbs to keep me going through the morning are a must for me. I have lost count of the number of people who say things like “I never have time..” or “I can’t face eating at breakfast time.” Each to their own.

I posted a while back about helping out in the Breakfast Club at school. Last night I went to the launch of an action plan to provide breakfast for every child in primary school ( 5-11) in Edinburgh sponsored by one of the main football teams in the city and a major insurance business. The purpose of their involvement serves both sides – gains valuable public awareness of their business links with the community and provides breakfast for children at no cost to their families.This does raise some issues though and many of them came up in the conversations I had last night.

Some comments were about whose responsibility it was to feed our children. Others about how long children should be in the care of the school. And I did hear someone mention that asking their already stretched staff to take on more responsibilities was going too far.

One of the speakers mentioned that we might make assumptions about apparent wealth deciding which children should and should not get breakfast – where in some households with relatively high incomes the parents are perhaps “time poor” so eating breakfast together – if at all – is not factored in.

Our school is in a low income area of the city but even then many of the children would be able to have breakfast at home. They have the choice though  to school to get some toast, cereal and fruit juice – and a bit of socialisation at the beginning of the day. They are then more alert when they get to class – and of course they are never late!

I have been invited to have breakfast at another school to see how they do it – we can then exchange ideas. We are now keeping our fingers crossed that local businesses will like the idea and want to sponsor our schools so that we can provide a continuing service.

Maybe supporting children to get into the breakfast habit will help them when they do enter the world of work. It’s maybe something to think about when you feel the energy dip in the middle of the morning and fill it with a caffeine hit and a chocolate bar?