a good nutritious breakfast everyday may boost childrens school performance by as much as twice the average a new largest ever study in wales uk has found the study involved recording the daily eating habits of nearly 5000 911 yearolds from more than 100 primary schools and following up on their teacher assessments 618 months later a direct and positive link between pupils breakfast quality and consumption and their educational attainment has been demonstrated for the first time in this study carried out by public health experts at cardiff university and published in the journal public health nutrition the study found that children who ate breakfast and who ate a better quality breakfast achieved higher academic outcomes the research found that the odds of achieving an above average educational performance were up to twice as high for pupils who ate breakfast compared with those who did not eating unhealthy items like sweets and crisps for breakfast which was reported by 1 in 5 children had no positive impact on educational attainment pupils were asked to list all food and drink consumed over a period of just over 24 hours including two breakfasts noting what they consumed at specific times throughout the previous day and for breakfast on the day of reporting alongside number of healthy breakfast items consumed for breakfast other dietary behaviours including number of sweets and crisps and fruit and vegetable portions consumed throughout the rest of the day were all significantly and positively associated with educational performance hannah littlecott from cardiff universitys centre for the development and evaluation of complex interventions for public health improvement decipher lead author of the study said this study therefore offers the strongest evidence yet of links between aspects of what pupils eat and how well they do at school which has significant implications for education and public health policy pertinent in light of rumours that free school meals may be scrapped following george osbornes november spending review professor chris bonell professor of sociology and social policy at the university college london institute of education welcomed the studys findings he said this study adds to a growing body of international evidence indicating that investing resources in effective interventions to improve young peoples health is also likely to improve their educational performance dr graham moore who also coauthored the report added most primary schools in wales are now able to offer a free school breakfast funded by welsh government our earlier papers from the trial of this scheme showed that it was effective in improving the quality of childrens breakfasts although there is less clear evidence of its role in reducing breakfast skipping linking our data to real world educational performance data has allowed us to provide robust evidence of a link between eating breakfast and doing well at school there is therefore good reason to believe that where schools are able to find ways of encouraging those young people who dont eat breakfast at home to eat a school