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Tackling child hunger is “about equal access to opportunity in society”, according to the head of the nationwide breakfast club scheme.
Richard Hutton from Greggs, who leads a programme providing tens of thousands of pupils with meals every day, told The Independent it is “hugely unfair” that some pupils arrive at school not in the right state to learn due to food poverty.
It comes as new research from YouGov and the bakery chain paints a stark picture of food poverty during the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact on children’s education.
The poll found nearly one third of parents with children aged four to 11 years old have prioritised their children’s breakfast over their own at least once a week.
Meanwhile, 18 per cent said they have struggled to afford food for their families due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Hutton, who runs a breakfast club scheme providing breakfast to nearly 40,000 schoolchildren every day, said tackling child hunger was “about levelling up, fundamentally” and “making sure that people have equal access to opportunity in our society”.
“There are children who, through no fault of their own, are on the back foot right from the start,” the Greggs Foundation trustee told The Independent.
“They’ve got the opportunity to learn and they’re being offered the education, but if they’re arriving at school and they’re not ready to take that opportunity, then that’s hugely unfair.”
At the heart of it, he said, is ensuring children can make the most of the education available to them through being “settled and ready to learn”.
“It’s a really simple thing – but it’s absolutely crucial that it’s addressed,” Mr Hutton, whose scheme runs breakfast clubs in hundreds of schools across the country, added.
The new YouGov research found more than one third of primary school teachers believe more pupils are turning up to school hungry in the morning since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Nearly all of these said this has affected concentration and tiredness in school, while just over three quarters said it had made behaviour worse.
Just under 90 per cent said they thought more children turning up hungry had impacted performance in school.
“I keep telling myself one of these days, there will be a need to do less because surely we can solve this because it’s a relatively low-cost problem as well,” Mr Hutton said.
“If you ever look at the cost of running a breakfast club, only a third of the cost is food. The other two thirds is the staffing to run it,” he said.
“If you can encourage people from your community to come and help, then it makes it very, very cost effective.”
Last month, a survey suggested nearly two million children have been short on food in the UK since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
A high-profile campaign led by Manchester United and England footballer Marcus Rashford to end child food poverty also took off during the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to a government U-turn on providing free school meals during school holidays.
Earlier this month, Lord Lebedev told the House of Lords that one of the “bleakest impacts” of Covid-19 was “the surge in hunger”.
The crossbench peer, who is a major shareholder inThe Independent and owns sister title the Evening Standard, said: “Perhaps it does need an outsider to say this – we are a rich country and children should not be going to school hungry.”
Echoing his comments on child hunger, Mr Hutton said: “You imagine as society sort of modernises and becomes more wealthy over time that this shouldn’t be an issue, but it clearly is.”
According to data last year, child poverty reached a 12-year high even before the pandemic began.
Towards the end of last year, the UK’s human rights watchdog warned the Covid-19 crisis was “exacerbating existing inequalities” and having a “devastating” impact on children’s wellbeing.
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