Rachel Reeves has announced hundreds of schools will host free breakfast clubs from April in a move that has been lauded by teacher’s unions.
Thousands of children will have access to a free breakfast club in up to 750 schools in England by spring next year, ahead of a wider national rollout potentially by September.
The move will help to alleviate poverty and help working parents maintain an income.
Speaking at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Reeves said:
“I will judge my time in office a success if I know that at the end of it, there are working-class kids from ordinary backgrounds who lead richer lives, their horizons expanded, and able to achieve and thrive in Britain today.”
She added that the move would be “an investment in our young people, an investment in reducing child poverty, an investment in our economy”.
Child Poverty Action chief executive Alison Garnham said the breakfast clubs were a “welcome start” but added that meeting Labour’s ambition to end child poverty will need “much more”.
“Even with a pledge of no return to the past, austerity is the reality for more and more children as they’re hit by the two-child limit. The policy must be scrapped – and soon – if the government is to deliver on its mission to reduce child poverty”, Garnham concluded.
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