Sugar tax to provide £26m for school breakfast club expansion

The Department for Education said the money will support more than 1,770 schools in England to provide breakfast clubs from this spring.

The money will be targeted at disadvantaged areas including the DfE's 12 opportunity areas, which have been identified as top priorities for improving children and young people's social mobility.

The DfE has appointed the charities Family Action and Magic Breakfast to help schools provide the clubs. The two charities will also work with schools to help them encourage more children to attend the clubs, which will also provide extra-curricular learning activities.

Education Secretary Damian Hinds said: "Paid for by the government's soft drinks levy, this investment will help raise education standards further and will make sure young people have happy, healthy childhoods."

The UK-wide soft drinks levy comes into force next month and is to be applied to companies that produce beverages with added sugar with the exception of milk-based drinks and fruit juices.

The levy is expected to raise £520m a year. When then Chancellor George Obsorne announced the levy in the 2016 Budget, he said £10m a year from the tax would be used to expand breakfast clubs in up to 1,600 schools from September 2017.

Carmel McConnell, founder of Magic Breakfast, said the new investment "will ensure a nutritious breakfast reaches many more thousands of hungry schoolchildren, unlocking up to four hours of learning each morning to support their education".

Magic Breakfast ran the DfE's previous breakfast clubs programme, which supported more than 31,500 pupils from 550 schools.

The announcement is part of the government's Childhood Obesity Plan, which seeks to encourage healthier childhoods. The plan has also seen the DfE double its support for primary school physical education and sport from £160m to £320m a year.