A primary school in York is building on the success of its breakfast club by offering pupils the chance to start the day with some brain food before they sit their SATs tests, as Lucy Coleman reports.

DERWENT School in Tang Hall has been offering its pupils a free breakfast club for more than a year now.

The club, which recently received a £2,000 fundraising boost from magazine Candis, is now offering a special initiative aimed exclusively at Year Six pupils for their SATs exams this week.

SATs exams, or Standard Assessment Tests, are taken at the end of Year Two, Year Six and Year Nine to gauge the progress of children in each age group.

Pupils are assessed in reading, writing, spelling, maths, mental arithmetic and science at Key Stage One (Year Two), Key Stage Two (Year Six) and Key Stage Three (Year Nine).

The individual child’s result is compared against the national average to observe their progress and asses how well they are doing. The SATs test results will help to stream children into ability sets at GCSE level and secondary school.

Carole Tuck, the founder of the Derwent breakfast club, said: “The Year Six breakfast is being held in a separate setting, not in the hall with everyone else.

“It offers a welcoming place for Year Six to socialise and wind down and the atmosphere helps them feel relaxed and confident. A good breakfast means a good start to the day.”

Mrs Tuck said there was a good turnout to the breakfast on Monday morning, with most Year Six pupils attending.

The breakfast club ensures the children are actually at school in the morning and encourages attendance. This special breakfast offers a choice of bacon or sausage “butties”, toast, juice, hot chocolate and bananas, which is that bit more substantial than the usual cereal, toast or fruit.

The school is also offering Year Six pupils a piece of fruit and bottle of water in the break between exams. It is hoped this will give the Year Six pupils the energy and concentration to do well in their exams.

Mrs Tuck believes there has been a noticeable improvement in the pupils’ concentration over the past year and this should continue with the SATs exams.

She said: “The breakfast club is bound to help SATs marks. The school will do whatever we can to help the kids during their exams.”

Sophie Patterson, 11, attended the special breakfast on Monday morning and thought she would go for breakfast for the rest of the week as well.

She said: “It was good to have something proper to eat this morning and to be able to talk to friends about the exams.”

The pupils have exams every morning this week in science, maths and English.