| | Hi, welcome to another episode of Hot Takes. |
| | Now I'd like to talk about a government policy that Bridget Phillipson wants to bring in, that she claims will help children. |
| | And yet, as we go through this piece, you'll find it won't only not help children, it will harm them. |
| | It will give them a worse education than they would otherwise get. |
| | And you have to wonder why Labour's Education Secretary wants to harm children's education. |
| | It's very, very weird. |
| | But we'll start by asking the question, why do you want to starve children? |
| | I mean, that's a question that people would ask of people who say that breakfast clubs are not a good idea. |
| | They go, oh, you want to starve children? |
| | Well, no, children aren't actually starving in the classroom. |
| | And this is the thing. |
| | Bridget Phillipson seems to think that putting these breakfast clubs in is a good idea. |
| | She really believes it, apparently. |
| | She thinks it helps. |
| | But of course, it doesn't. |
| | And anything that's along those lines of, oh, you want to starve children. |
| | It's a bit preachy, isn't it? |
| | But it doesn't actually work. |
| | Now, you can't make this an ideological argument without facts, because ideology is fine until it all goes a bit Pete Tong. |
| | But people in the sort of kid-starver camp have more often than not tried to respond with some variant. |
| | Oh, it's the parent's responsibility to feed their children. |
| | Because yes, it is clearly the parent's responsibility to feed their children. |
| | And it's there. |
| | Whereas the other one, the other view is that, oh, but by feeding children at school, you guarantee they have enough food. |
| | Well, this is where it all goes wrong, of course. |
| | The very best research on the subject, research that is research that is not produced by lobbying groups, even noble ones, you know, amounts essentially to a shrug as far as the policy success is concerned. |
| | One experiment that was conducted by the US Department of Agriculture tested two models of delivering free breakfasts. |
| | The breakfast club model, Labour is proposing, and a breakfast in the classroom modification. |
| | They found that neither model accomplished anything. |
| | Kids in breakfast clubs were only one percentage point more likely to actually eat breakfast, and consumed no more calories or nutrients than they would otherwise have done if they'd have had it at home. |
| | Two substitution effects, something which politicians seem time and time again incapable of conceiving, were operating here. |
| | First, that breakfast at school just ended up replacing breakfast at home. |
| | And second, where kids did eat more breakfast, they just had less food at lunchtime. |
| | Da-da! |
| | Now, naturally, as you probably expect, given no more breakfast was consumed, the study found no impact no impact on health. |
| | No impact on food security, on behaviour, no impact on test scoring. |
| | Made no difference whatsoever. |
| | Bridget Philipson, though, is sure that it will make such a big difference, in her words, and have a, again, quoting, huge impact on children's education, their attainment, and wellbeing. |
| | And yet, no evidence for this exists. |
| | Now, it should be made clear that this study, that they did, it ran for, and followed up its data of collection, I think, for years. |
| | Right? |
| | And the fantastical claim that it keeps being wheeled out, that they, that the Labour Party keeps saying as well, is that for every £1 invested, £50 will be returned. |
| | Well, no, that's got zero basis in reality. |
| | Um, well, unless you suppose that the benefits of a breakfast only materialise two decades later when they're at work. |
| | But that's two decades of inflation, it's a load of old rubbish, isn't it? |
| | Anyway, um, it isn't just, uh, that study, of course, that found that breakfast clubs do nothing. |
| | New York City tried out a breakfast clubs in 2003, and their programme found the same. |
| | No impact on maths or reading scores. |
| | Wales did it. |
| | What was the result? |
| | No impact on the amount of breakfast consumed. |
| | Now, even the body that our government likes to cite to prove their policy will work, which is the Education Endowment Foundation, was forced to conclude it doesn't. |
| | So the government are saying, oh, it'll work, because this, this, they told us, the Education Endowment Foundation told us. |
| | And the Endowment Foundation said, no, it doesn't. |
| | Their systemic review, and that is to say, a study that placed other studies, 25 of them, in fact, found that the average impact of breakfast provision in schools when aggregating all studies on attainment is null. |
| | Nothing at all. |
| | Zero. |
| | Nada. |
| | It makes absolutely no difference at all. |
| | Indeed, only one study in the developed world to find an actual noticeable impact, and thus the only one, of course, that the government likes to cite the most, is what they call a randomised control trial from the early 2010s. |
| | And yet, that randomised trial, which was meant to be the gold standard for research, ended up not actually being randomised at all, because, both because the researchers set bizarre exclusion criteria, and it didn't actually conduct any randomisation. |
| | So it was a false criteria. |
| | But, even then, once again, it found that no more breakfast was actually consumed as a result of breakfast clubs. |
| | And this is the one that they love. |
| | This is the one that they say is the best ever evidence, and there's no evidence whatsoever. |
| | It's just weird. |
| | Now, it should be said, too, that what noticeable impacts it did purport to find were only on non-objective measures. |
| | For the groups where actual objective data was used, the study again found no effect. |
| | Now, this is despite government promising that just making breakfast clubs free will add two months of educational attainment to each pupil. |
| | But it's clearly rubbish. |
| | The policy not working needn't kill the policy, of course. |
| | these people are ideologically driven. |
| | There are good arguments to offer free breakfast clubs at school, but they are ideological and ethical, not evidentiary or objective. |
| | If Phillips had stood up and said, we are social democrats, and we want to do this because we believe it's the right thing, that might be fine. |
| | But it isn't. |
| | And that's not what they've got. |
| | Instead of having evidence-based policy-making, they've now got policy-based evidence-making. |
| | And that, of course, is where it's all going to fall down. |
| | And it would be one thing if schools were flush with cash. |
| | But in reality, Philipson is putting schools in a position where they will have to be proactively cut projects that do work. |
| | You know, hiring actual teachers to fund projects that don't, such as breakfast clubs. |
| | There's no such thing as a free lunch. |
| | Or indeed, a free breakfast. |
| | And Labour's plan is to provide each school with just 60 pence per pupil per meal. |
| | A figure ridiculed because nobody believes it is achievable. |
| | Not even Labour themselves, whose stats imply parents spend £2.10 per breakfast. |
| | And there's a reason school boss after school boss has expressed their concern about it. |
| | Talking about having to make £10,000 of cuts to fund Labour's, quote, fully funded policy. |
| | And of course, who's going to suffer when the teachers aren't being hired because they've got to provide food instead of teaching? |
| | It'll be the pupils. |
| | Jesus Christ. |
| | Bridget Philipson, you're a moron. |
| | Thanks very much. |
| | Bye. |