The SU(3) flavour symmetry breaking expansion in up, down and strange quark masses is extended from hadron masses to meson decay constants. This allows a determination of the ratio of kaon to pion decay constants in QCD. Furthermore when using partially quenched valence quarks the expansion is such that SU(2) isospin breaking effects can also be determined. It is found that the lowest order SU( 3) flavour symmetry breaking expansion (or Gell-Mann-Okubo expansion) works very well. Simulations are performed for 2 + 1 flavours of clover fermions at four lattice spacings. (C) 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.