STUDENTS will be making a meal of their latest windfall after completing an innovative online breakfast club training programme.
Marchbank Free School received a £500 grant from cereal maker Kellogg’s for its work on the project developed by Northumbria University.
The online course provides information on the benefits of breakfast clubs and healthy eating as well as offering helpful advice on planning, funding and marketing the club.
Principal Mandy Southwick said: “The funding is fantastic but the handy tips we picked up through the training course were priceless. We are looking forward to using the grant money to subsidise breakfasts for the children as well as buying some new crockery and play equipment for the club.
“It’s so encouraging to see companies like Kellogg’s supporting breakfast clubs like ours as it means we can carry on delivering the same excellent service to our children and their families.”
Kellogg’s has been supporting breakfast clubs for 16 years and has set up more than 1,000 new ones in some of the most deprived areas of the UK.
Earlier this year, Kellogg’s commissioned a national audit of school breakfast clubs across the UK which examined the challenges schools face in sustaining them. The findings revealed 85 per cent of schools had a breakfast club and 45 per cent of these admitted funding was the single biggest need for the future of their breakfast club.
Kellogg’s offers sustainability packages of training and funding to schools nationwide to help safeguard the longevity of their breakfast clubs.
Kellogg’s corporate social responsibility manager Kate Prince said “We’re really proud of what we have achieved through our breakfast club programme and are always looking for ways to offer schools more support.
“After 16 years of setting up breakfast clubs, we’ve decided to focus on our support on existing clubs like Marchbank Free School, which is why we have developed this training programme to give staff the skills they need to make their breakfast clubs as sustainable as possible to ensure a long and prosperous future.”