Soon the return of free breakfasts in schools?

While the health crisis is in full swing, the government is trying to reinstate social measures, hampered by the pandemic. Among them, free breakfasts 2 to 3 times a week, for children in a precarious situation, and who arrive at school hungry.


by Cécile Fischer

You don't necessarily realize it, but many students come to school hungry. Not because they are not hungry, but because they find themselves in a situation of poverty which does not allow them to have breakfast at home. According to France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine, there are more than 3 million children in this situation in France.

To remedy this, the government launched two years ago “free breakfasts”, 2 to 3 times a week, for students in need. The initiative, included in the 2018 poverty plan announced by the President of the Republic, was unfortunately stopped because of the health crisis. On March 15, the government told AFP it wanted to redeploy the measure. In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

The principle of free breakfast

Initially introduced in priority areas, this measure has already had 153,000 beneficiaries between 2019 and 2020. Only at the time, there were specific conditions for a school to be eligible. It had to be voluntary, in a REP area (priority education network), a REP +, a priority district of city policy or in a predefined rural area. The state then gave € 1 per pupil per breakfast. With the budget set at 12 million euros for a full year, it could well rise to 46 million depending on the needs.

But today, the National Education wants to make eligibility more flexible, in order to increase the number of beneficiaries and to be as fair as possible. For this reason, a social positioning indicator (SPI) -indicator constructed from the parents' profession, making it possible to assess whether a pupil is in a situation favorable to learning-, will make it possible to identify which schools can benefit from these breakfasts.

A very nice initiative for children, which we hope will soon be implemented. It is more than difficult to concentrate in class while being hungry.