Free School Meals

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

On Thursday, I think I will have the opportunity to answer a Question in this House on financial education in schools. Of course, I agree with the noble Earl that it is important that children develop the mathematical and business skills to understand the decisions that they then need to make about their own and their family’s money, and he makes an important point about pension contributions —notwithstanding his argument that young people should start them from the age of 18. I am not quite sure whether, in primary school, you can embed in a child’s mind the significance of that, but he makes an important point about ensuring that people understand the importance of pensions. Of course, hopefully, those children will look to their grandparents and the additional funding that they will receive as a result of this Government’s ability to maintain the triple lock, and they will see that investing in a pension is a good thing to do.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this Statement. It really is good news. I particularly welcome the look at nutritional standards. We talked about resources in, but, in education, we use free school meals as a measurement not only for money going into the school but for attainment levels, and that has become quite a considered and important way of monitoring performance and improvement. Have the Government given any thought to how having so many more children entitled to free school meals will affect that set of statistics, and does more work need to be done on that?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend makes two important points. First, she is right that, alongside this announcement, we have also said that we think now is the right time to review the nutritional standards for school food. My ministerial colleagues have already begun work with stakeholders on scoping out what will happen there and how those standards can be brought up to date. It is an important point that quite often accountability measures—analysis and monitoring of attainment—is based on a proxy of free school meals for disadvantage. The department will look at other ways of measuring that disadvantage and the way in which that can then be used to ensure attainment. Even more importantly, as I am sure my noble friend will have noticed, the Secretary of State is absolutely clear that the most disadvantaged groups need to have a better deal and to be supported to perform better in our schools than has been the case until this point, and she will do everything necessary not only to measure how effective that is, but to ensure that it happens as well.