Free School Meals

(asked on 25th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children in England were receiving free school meals as of 21 January 2021.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 28th January 2021

The spring 2021 census date is 21 January, and the window for schools to return census data closes on Wednesday 17 February. Information from this current census is therefore not yet available.

The department publishes information annually from the January school census on the number of children eligible for free school meals and the number of children who claim a meal on school census day. The figures form part of the ‘Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics’ release and are usually published in June.

The publication series, including the most recent publicly available figures for January 2020, can be found via this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-and-pupil-numbers.

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