Free Breakfast Club Programme Food Partnering Open Call - Academic Year 26/27

Description

The free breakfast club programme is one of the Department for Education's flagship policies, central to the Government's mission to break down barriers to opportunity for every child. Once fully implemented, it will deliver a free breakfast club in every primary school in England, giving millions of children the chance to start the day supported and ready to learn. Evidence shows that where schools run breakfast clubs, they report improvements to pupils' behaviour, attendance and attainment. The free breakfast club programme will mean every school, every child, and every family has the chance to receive those benefits. Since April 2025, we have funded c.750 schools to offer a free breakfast club as early adopters, delivering 7 million meals so far. Following the success of the early adopters, we are moving to national rollout investing a further £80m into the programme to fund an additional c.2,000 schools between April 2026 and March 2027. This will benefit around half a million more children. We invited schools with a 40% or higher Free School Meal (FSM) rate (or the most disadvantaged school in an area, whichever is lower) to apply to join the scheme in April 2026, getting the benefits to those who need them most, first. National rollout will then continue in September 2026, when more schools will open their free breakfast clubs, taking the total to c.3000 schools. Business Collaboration Through the free breakfast club programme, schools are fully funded to deliver a 30-minute club each morning, giving parents free childcare whilst their children can enjoy a nutritious breakfast, however, there is room to increase the impact so children can start their day in the best possible way. We know there are already great partnerships happening locally between schools, businesses and industry. The Department is keen to explore how we could strengthen and scale these approaches nationally, to maximise impact and enable all participating schools to benefit in the same way. During the early adopter 'test and learn' phase, the Department partnered with organisations across industry to further strengthen the programme's impact and maximise schools' funding, with a particular focus on breakfast provision. Following an Open Call published in July 2025, we received four offers of varied discounts/deals from national supermarkets and charities. These offers have been available to our c.750 early adopter schools since November 2025 and have been extremely well received by participating schools. As the rollout of free breakfast club continues, we want to build on the success of the early adopter phase by continuing to partner with organisations across the industry to help maximise the support available to schools. Additional information: We are seeking offers from food providers that enable Participating Schools in the free breakfast club programme in the 2026/27 academic year to maximise the value of their food spending and enhance their breakfast provision for pupils. In return, the Department proposes to offer partners a package of rights, as detailed below. Any deals offered by the partner will not be mandated for Participating Schools to make use of and Participating Schools will retain flexibility and choice in how they procure their food. We know that Participating Schools source food for their free breakfast clubs from a wide range of food providers. This sponsorship is intended to leverage the profile of the programme at a national level to ensure all Participating Schools have access to the best value-for-money deals. We are also seeking to address challenges that Participating Schools face in ordering food, including ease of access and use of ordering systems, reliability of delivery, minimum order values and volume restrictions. This notice relates to an opportunity which is not subject to the Procurement Act 2023. Accordingly, this notice is published on a voluntary basis for transparency purposes and to encourage market interest in the relevant opportunity.

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