Free School Meals

The new government has a central mission to break down barriers to opportunity for every child.

The government has inherited a trend of rising child poverty and widening attainment gaps between children eligible for free school meals (FSM) and their peers. Child poverty has increased by 700,000 since 2010, with over four million children now growing up in a low income family. The government is committed to delivering an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty by tackling the root causes and giving every child the best start at life. To support this, a new ministerial taskforce has been set up to develop a Child Poverty Strategy, which will be published in spring 2025. The taskforce will consider a range of policies in assessing what will have the greatest impact in driving down rates of child poverty.

The department has not made a recent formal assessment of the proportion of children who are eligible for FSM but not registered to receive the entitlement. The last review conducted in 2013 suggested that 89% of eligible pupils were registered for FSM. We recognise the vital role played by FSM and encourage all eligible families to take their entitlement up and join the 2.1 million pupils currently registered to receive FSM. To support FSM take up, we provide the Eligibility Checking System which allows local authorities to quickly verify eligibility for FSM and ensure that it is easily received.

The department has not formally assessed the number and proportion of children who would be eligible for FSM, had the eligibility threshold for households on Universal Credit increased in line with inflation since its introduction in 2018. As with all policies, the government keeps the approach to FSM under review.