A NI high school has announced it is introducing free breakfast to all pupils until the end of the school year.
Karen Mulholland, principal of City of Armagh High School, spoke on Good Morning Ulster on Friday and said this will begin from Monday.
Belfast Live previously reported how Hazelwood Integrated College in North Belfast is providing hot meals for all pupils throughout January - which they say they want to extend.
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They have also committed to free school breakfast for pupils for the long term. Acting principal Aine Leslie, also spoke on GMU on Friday.
City of Armagh High School principal Karen Mulholland told the show: "We decided from Monday that we were going to offer free breakfast to every pupil until the end of the school year.
"It's something that we wanted to do, we felt we wanted to help our school community in the current economic climate, it's something we felt everybody would appreciate.
"We have about 380 pupils.
"There is a number of reasons but one of them was we realised we do have children who don't have anything to eat from they have their dinner in the evening at home until they come and get their lunch the next day.
"Breakfast is vital for the learning and development of every child and is was something we felt we could do and we wanted to do."
When asked on GMU about how this will be funded and if it comes out of the school's budget she added: "No, the budget probably doesn't cover that, but it was actually our vice principal Kyle Rendall. We began this process back in September and he has approached some of our local businesses and they are supporting us.
"Some businesses like Sainsbury's, Marks and Spencer, Lidl, Irwin's Bakery who would all be local to the school have offered us support, funding to allow us to do this."
Acting principal of Hazelwood Integrated College, Aine Lesley then told GMU: "Like Karen, we are rolling out free breakfast for all students in the morning time, however we are into our third year now of giving free school meals to all of our students in December. Now this year we have rolled that out and extended it to January.
"We would love to roll it out further into February and March.
"We just find that sort of November to March time is the most difficult for families but again like Karen, it relies on external funding sources so we can't commit to long term free school meals for all students, but we have committed to our free breakfast for all students for the long term."
The acting principal was then asked on GMU about how it left her feeling that the school isn't in a position to do it wants to do.
Aine replied: "It's just a state of feeling helpless for those students and for those families. We did listen to our pupil voice, we listened to our parent voice and we listened to our staff voice, and whilst some of this work was part of Covid recovery, we soon realised it was more than Covid recovery. There was a real need for families pre-Covid for this and certainly post-Covid.
"In terms of the cost of living crisis, we have done Christmas hampers donated to families anonymously... identifying need through form tutors, through heads of years, through our pastoral care system. We have a school social worker, we have a school mental health nurse - we have relied on them to identify those families in real need so we that could tailor our support even more effectively."
Aine then added: "For us, we just believe that if you can provide breakfast for a child for under £1 a day, you know, surely there should be some long-term sustainable funding to do that.
"Yes, free school meals for all pupils, that's a huge investment and I know that DE are going their very best in terms of funding for Covid recovery through extended schools but we really need to look at maybe a joined up approach, maybe Department of Education, Department of Health, Department of Communities because it's not just about the Department of Education - this is like a public health issue for us, children being fed, coming into school ready for learning, that's what we want to work on."
Karen continued: "Everybody should have access to a breakfast...
"As Aine said, the Department of Health, the Department of Education, if they work together, [it] could be something that could be funded probably reasonably easily."
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