Brain food: School children who skip breakfast are less likely to achieve good grades at GCSE, study claims
- School children who eat breakfast ‘regularly’ perform better in exams
- The researchers found 30 per cent of kids ‘rarely or never’ ate breakfast
- Half a million children are arriving at school each day too hungry to learn
Pupils who skip breakfast on school days are less likely to achieve good grades at GCSE, according to a new study.
Researchers found that school children who eat breakfast ‘regularly’ perform better in exams, scoring on average two grades above their fellow students.
But only a fraction of the 24,000 state-funded schools in the UK offer their students breakfast.
Lead researcher Dr Katie Adolphus, of the University of Leeds, said: ‘Our study suggests that secondary school students are at a disadvantage if they are not getting a morning meal to fuel their brains for the start of the school day.
‘The UK has a growing problem of food poverty, with an estimated half a million children arriving at school each day too hungry to learn.’
School children who eat breakfast ‘regularly’ perform better in exams, scoring on average two grades above their fellow students
Dr Adolphus added: ‘This research suggests that poor nutrition is associated with worse results at school.’
The researchers found 30 per cent of kids ‘rarely or never’ ate breakfast, after surveying 300 students from schools and colleges in West-Yorkshire.
While 20 per cent said they only ate breakfast occasionally.
The team then tallied students GCSE grades across all subjects and found missing the morning meal meant they scored on average ten points less others.
Schools have had to sponsor breakfast clubs themselves or depend on charities such as Magic Breakfast and Family Action, as the government’s free school meal programme only sponsors lunches. This leaves over 20,000 schools breakfast hungry.
Alex Cunningham, Magic Breakfast CEO, said: ‘This study is a valuable insight, reinforcing the importance of breakfast in boosting pupils’ academic attainment and removing barriers to learning.
Breakfast boosts pupils’ academic attainment and removes barriers to learning, according to the researchers
‘Education is crucial to a child’s future life success and escaping poverty, therefore ensuring every child has access to a healthy start to the day must be a priority.’
He added: ‘We are grateful to the University of Leeds for highlighting this positive impact and welcome their findings, highlighting once again the importance of our work with schools.’
The findings reflect the latest national data, which found 16 per cent of secondary school children skip breakfast.
Nicola Dolton, programme manager at Family Action, added: ‘The National School Breakfast Programme is delighted to see the publication of this thorough and compelling research, highlighting the impact that breakfast consumption has on a child’s GCSE attainment.
‘This report provides impressive evidence that eating a healthy breakfast improves a child’s educational attainment, which supports our own findings of improvements in a child’s concentration in class, readiness to learn, behaviour and punctuality.’
The findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.