Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Sutton Trust’s Closing the Attainment Gap report, published on 22 February 2024, what recent assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of expanding free school meal eligibility to all children on Universal Credit.

The government is driving an agenda of change to break down the barriers to opportunity and to reduce child poverty, working across local and national government.

Child poverty has increased by 700,000 since 2010, with over four million children now growing up in a low income family. That is why the government is committed to delivering an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty, 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 the spring.

The department is also committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity so that all children have the freedom to achieve and thrive in education. To support this aim, the government is committed to introducing free breakfast clubs in every primary school to set children up for the day and ensure they are ready to learn, while supporting parents and carers to work.

Disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools, as well as 16 to 18-year-old students in further education (FE), are entitled to receive free meals on the basis of low income. 2.1 million disadvantaged pupils are registered to receive free school meals (FSM) and a further 90,000 are registered to receive FE free meals. In addition, all children in reception, year 1 and year 2 in England's state-funded schools are entitled to Universal Infant Free School Meals, which benefits around 1.3 million pupils.

As with all government programmes, we will keep our approach to FSM under review.