Bohemia Village Voice

Pat Lock of St Pauls.

St Paul’s School will be starting a breakfast club when the new school year begins in September. At present, a number of children are delivered to the school at 8 o’clock in the morning, or shortly afterwards, as their parents rush off to work. With no staff officially on duty at that hour, the children are left to congregate unsupervised in the playground, and in all weathers.
 Headteacher Pat Lock told the Voice, ‘The current situation is unacceptable, and it’s the parents themselves who have asked us to start a breakfast club. At the moment the children are not our responsibility until registration, yet they’re hanging around in the playground with nothing to do. We want to get them inside where they can be supervised by existing members of staff, have a bit of breakfast and play with toys until school starts.’
 Mrs Lock says that the school has recently received money from the local ‘excellence cluster’ to pay for the costs of setting up the breakfast club. However, the parents whose children use the club will have to pay for the ongoing costs of staffing and the provision of bread, milk, butter, etc. ‘Unfortunately, the school’s budget doesn’t stretch to cover the cost of running the club, so we’re looking at a fee of perhaps £1.50 a day per child. Obviously, for some families that’s going to be difficult, so we’re hoping that local businesses might be willing to sponsor a child or a group of children for a year or more. Alternatively, if a shop or bakery wanted to supply us with free bread or milk or butter, that would also be very welcome. We’d make sure that everyone knew where the sponsorship came from, whatever form it took, and it could also be gift-aided to us. What we don’t want is to end up with a situation where those children who can afford it can come in and have breakfast, while those that can’t have to wait outside. We wouldn’t let that happen, of course, but a little bit of outside help would go a long way.’