Guidance

Breakfast club early adopters grant: 2025 to 2026 academic year

Guidance for schools and local authorities on funding for the breakfast club early adopter schools from September 2025.

From:
Department for Education
Published
9 July 2025

Applies to England

Documents

Breakfast clubs early adopters: conditions of grant for the 2025 to 2026 academic year, ending March 2026

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Breakfast clubs early adopters: methodology for September 2025 to March 2026

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Details

This guidance is for:   

  • local authorities   
  • school leaders   
  • school teachers   
  • governing bodies and their representatives  

The government has committed to offering a free and universal breakfast club in every primary school. The Department for Education (DfE) has selected schools to become early adopters through an expression of interest process. Early adopters will work with the department to understand barriers to delivery, shape plans for national rollout, and ensure schools across the country have good practice to draw on. They have been selected to ensure a wide range of representation across different school characteristics.   

Conditions of grant  

This guidance sets out the terms and conditions applied to the funding for eligible institutions that are taking part in the early adopters scheme.  

Methodology   

This guidance will help schools and local authorities understand how the grant is calculated for September 2025 to March 2026 and how it will be paid.  

Payments and allocations  

Payments will be made in multiple phases: 

  • we will publish allocations for the fixed payment which will be made at the end of November 2025 for local authorities and beginning of December 2025 for academies 

  • a further payment in arrears will be made at the end of February 2026 for local authorities and beginning of March 2026 for academies – this payment will be determined by actual pupil uptake and data will be collected from schools during the autumn 2025  school term. 

  • a further payment in arrears will be made at the end of May 2026 for local authorities and beginning of June 2026 for academies – this payment will be determined by actual pupil uptake and data will be collected from schools during the spring 2026 school term. 

We will aim to communicate payment schedules for the remaining academic year in early 2026.   

Further details   

If early adopter schools have any questions about delivering their breakfast club, please reach out to us through the DfE customer help portal.

Updates to this page

Published 9 July 2025

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