The Prime Minister has visited a primary school in Caversham to promote the Labour government’s policy of introducing free breakfast clubs.
Sir Keir Starmer attended St Anne’s Catholic Primary School today (Thursday, November 20), one of the early adopters of the free breakfast clubs initiatives.
The clubs are managed by schools, which provide food, drinks and activities for pupils before the school day.
There have been 750 primary schools in the UK that took part in the pilot program for free breakfast clubs, which began in April 2025.
The clubs receive grant funding from the government for the breakfasts.
But concern has been raised that the scheme is well-intentioned but financially unviable for cash-strapped schools.
To that point, Sir Keir said: “Well, this is more than well-intentioned; it’s really important.
“Free Breakfast Clubs mean that children hear at St Anne’s in Reading, which has been a pilot school, can come in, get something to eat, some of them might not otherwise have had something to eat and we know that breakfast is a really important meal of the day, it gives them activities, which helps them with their learning and then they can get on with their learning in the first period of school.
“And the results are that the children do better. At the same time, the parents and carers can drop their children off early, get off to work if that’s what they want to do, earn some more money, and of course save some money, and when the cost of living is the central, most important issue in the country, that is hugely important.
“Now, on the funding, we used the rollout of the pilot to test the number of provisions. There is now additional funding for schools.
“We have been talking to the staff here, actually, who’ve made a real success of this, and that’s the point of the pilot, to show that it could be done.”
St Anne’s is one of two schools involved in the pilot in Berkshire, with the other being Caversham Park Primary School.
Following the success of the early adopter scheme, as the first phase of national rollout, the government is investing a further £80 million into the programme to fund an additional 2,000 schools between April 2026 and March 2027.
Applications for grant funding to set up free breakfast clubs were opened today.
Eight schools in Reading are eligible for funding for free breakfast clubs, according to the government.
The funding can only be accessed by a school if it submits an ‘expression of interest’ to the Department for Education (DfE).
After that, grant funding is supplied either from the DfE for academies or through the local authority, such as Reading Borough Council, for maintained schools.
