With the UK battling snowstorms across the country this week and temperatures hitting -12 degrees in some areas, a hot and healthy breakfast has never been more needed.
A good breakfast however, is not only important in winter - for schoolchildren it is a crucial start to their day.
A yearlong research study by the Education Endowment Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies found a strong positive link between children eating a nutritious breakfast at school and attainment. The research showed breakfast clubs can boost pupils’ reading, writing and maths progress by the equivalent of two months’ over the course of a year. Hunger is also proven to have an adverse effect on concentration levels, and the evaluators reported that pupil concentration and behaviour improved too.
These findings suggest breakfast clubs provide an opportunity to improve outcomes for all children, not just those who actually attend, by creating better classroom environments.
That’s why we partnered with Magic Breakfast to provide over a million free breakfasts in 77 schools across the UK in the 2017-18 school year, ensuring over 5,000 children a day get a nutritious breakfast and are able to start the day ready to learn.
It’s also why, today, we are helping Magic Breakfast bring free breakfast clubs to schools across Scotland to support their mission to eradicate hunger as a barrier to education in areas of social deprivation.
Our support in Scotland includes funding breakfast clubs in primary and secondary schools neighbouring our development centre and customer service centre in Edinburgh, Prime Now site in Glasgow, and fulfilment centres in Dunfermline and Gourock. In addition, our employees will also be able to volunteer at the breakfast clubs - chatting and playing games with the children and helping ensuring all the kids are well fed. In total, Magic Breakfast will work with 13 schools in Scotland, reaching over 400 children in Scotland every school day.
Our work with Magic Breakfast forms part of our Amazon in the Community programme, which supports communities in and around where Amazon operates in the UK.
