Children who miss breakfast get worse GCSE exams results
Children who miss breakfast get worse GCSE exams results
Food and the ability to think are well known. Without a reasonably good breakfast and the morning’s learning is wasted. For growing teenagers who have several exam series through their fast growing. So much energy is used up in growing that they body needs breakfast to do the thinking as well.
Footballer Marcus Rashford has raised the awarness of lack of meals when school are closed. So private businesses and councils have found ways to offer free school meals.
Note this research does not give details to the content of the breakfast other than being nutritious. Nor does this give any reference to exam candidates on EHCP or access arrangements.
How this affects exams in the long run is hard to quantity. However, that has not stop some organisations from trying.
Children that habitually miss breakfast have a large gap in exam achievement. With a several degrees of variation lower GCSE grades compared to exam candidates who have a habitual breakfast.
The Leeds university study showed the fall of two grades that have been lost in GCSE exams for those who habitually have breakfast. The variation priced in the socio economic status along with other factors. Including BMI, sex, ethnicity and age.
Here at the exam house we strongly believe that the route of exam success is breakfast.
The research is published today in the journal Frontiers in Public Health and can be found here.
Lead researcher Dr Katie Adolphus, who ran the study is quoted in saying “Our study suggests that secondary school students are at a disadvantage if they are not getting a morning meal to fuel their brains for the start of the school day.'“
Dr Katie goes on: “The UK has a growing problem of food poverty, with an estimated half a million children arriving at school each day too hungry to learn. Previously we have shown that eating breakfast has a positive impact on children’s cognition. This research suggests that poor nutrition is associated with worse results at school.”
The numbers are: 29 % simply missed breakfast while at school. 18% it was occasional 53 % Frequent
The study found those who rarely ate breakfast scored around a fifth of a grade less in each exam, compared with those who regularly consumed it.
Overall, academic performance of those skipping breakfast was almost two grades lower, after accounting for factors such as socio-economic status, ethnicity, age, sex and BMI.
Free meals are provided to children in England on a means-tested basis, but there is no equivalent for breakfast.
Free meals are means-tested basis. However breakfast is not included.
The bones of the research included 294 students from schools Yorkshire in 2011.
GCSE grades were converted to point scores using the Department for Education’s 2012 system, where A* = 58, A = 52, B = 46, and so on. Adding up exam candidates’ scores across all subjects gave students an aggregated score.
The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and The Schools Partnership Trust Academies.