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Eating breakfast leads to better GCSE results, researchers find

Students who rarely eat breakfast on school days score nearly two GCSE grades lower than those who regularly eat their morning meal, researchers have discovered.

It is the first time that a link has been shown eating breakfast and GCSE performance.


The study by academics at the University of Leeds has been published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health and the researchers say that their findings support recent calls for the government to expand the limited free school breakfast programme to include every state school in England.

Currently, there is no national policy of funding school breakfasts for disadvantaged students, such as exists for school lunches under the free school meals programme.

However, the National School Breakfast Programme, which is funded by the Department for Education and run by charities Magic Breakfast and Family Action, reaches 1,800 schools in deprived areas of England and offers all students in those schools access to a free breakfast.

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