Offering breakfast as part of the school day can significantly reduce chronic absenteeism according to a new report conducted by the University of California Santa Barbara on behalf of No Kid Hungry. This research shows that when schools adopt a ‘Breakfast After the Bell’ program, they can potentially see chronic absenteeism rates drop significantly.
Nearly 8 million students a year are considered “chronically absent,” meaning they miss at least three weeks of school per year. School officials around the nation are focused on finding ways to reduce this number. This original research, found:
- Serving breakfast as part of the school day can reduce chronic absenteeism by an average of 6 percentage points.
- For context, holding all other factors constant, a school where 22% of students are chronically absent (the average in the schools studied) could see that drop to 16% after implementing Breakfast After the Bell.
- And while the focus of the study was absenteeism, exploratory analysis also found that Breakfast After the Bell led to improvements in reading achievement and “internalizing behaviors,” such as anxiety, loneliness and sadness among students.
Check out the micro-report to learn more about the findings and how it can impact your work!