Dear parents, did you know your son/daughter has pizza for breakfast every day?

Every week I do morning break duty, in fact i’ve had a break duty ever since I became a teacher, in 3 schools every school has been a ‘healthy school‘ and EVERY school has served pizza to learners as young as 11 every single day of the week before 10am!

Last week I stood by the door and counted 47 learners consuming pizza at morning break, given I stand in canteen 3 of 3 potentially you’ve almost 150 learners having pizza for breakfast… that’s an entire year group!

Next lesson I had year 9 so I ran an impromptu survey;

• What did you have before school for breakfast?
• What have you eaten since coming to school today?
• What are you planning on having for lunch/dinner?

I then asked about the day before to see a ‘whole day’ picture…

The all too frightening majority looked like this;

• Breakfast – Doritos (or similar crisps bought from shop on way to school) and a fizzy drink
• Pizza at morning break
• Chips and pizza for lunch
• KFC for walk home from school (sadly we have a KFC right outside the school gates, it’s a mad rush into the front door at 3pm!)
• Chips/sausage/kebab or other chip shop food for tea or frozen pizza.

My heart sank, out of a class for 27 I counted only 5 learners who’d had a home cooked meal – and by cooked I mean prepared not simply reheated.

Is it our responsibility?

For as long as I’ve been a teacher this serving of greasy food at any point of the day has bothered me. I’ve always worked in schools where we’ve known that our learners might not have a balanced diet.

My belief has been that with this in mind we should make sure the only thing on offer at school is healthy and balanced, and even introduce learners to foods they might not try at home.

Your support/action….

I’d like to survey schools across the country with your help!

If you’d like to take part, please ask your learners the same questions I did.

• What did you have before school for breakfast?
• What have you eaten since coming to school today?
• What are you planning on having for lunch/dinner?
• What did you eat yesterday?

Post a review of your learners responses under this post as a comment, or email it to me paul@tips4teaching.co.uk.

A sketchnote on the subject of healthy schools:

Published by Paul

Teacher | Author | Lead Practitioner View all posts by Paul