Could school breakfast club attendance lead to improvements in children's behaviour?

Recent research has suggested that a link may exist between school breakfast club attendance and improvements in children’s social relationships, cognition, academic performance and nutritional status. Although it has been suggested that breakfast club attendance might help to smooth the transition between home and school in the morning, very little research attention has been paid to the potential impact of breakfast club attendance on children’s behaviour. The current study employed an observational method to investigate whether children’s behaviour altered across the duration of the breakfast club session. The behaviour of two-hundred-andthirty-two children, aged between seven and eleven years, was observed during the first and last five minutes of seventy-five breakfast club sessions. All children consumed a breakfast meal upon entering breakfast club. Analysis revealed that the perceived level of classroom noise, the number of incidents of negative social interaction and children’s level of excitability decreased significantly across the breakfast club session, while the number of incidents of positive social interaction significantly increased. The current findings provide support for previous anecdotal evidence, which suggests that breakfast club attendance might aide children’s transition from home to school. Further research is now required to investigate whether improvements in children’s behaviour across breakfast club sessions are a result of breakfast consumption or due to children spending time in a structured school environment.