Free School Meals

(asked on 23rd March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason his Department does not use data held by the Department for Work and Pensions to automatically register all pupils eligible for means-tested free school meals; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 30th March 2022

Under benefits-related criteria, the department provide a free healthy meal to around 1.7 million children, ensuring they are well nourished, and can concentrate, learn, and achieve in the classroom.

Under this government, eligibility for free school meals has been extended several times, including through the introduction of universal infant free school meals, and further education free school meals.

The department are permanently extending free school meal eligibility to children from all groups with no recourse to public funds. This will come into effect for the start of the summer term.

Whilst take-up of free school meals is strong, we want to make sure as many eligible pupils as possible are claiming their free school meals, and to make it as simple as possible for schools and local authorities to determine eligibility.

To support this, the department provides an eligibility checking system to make the checking process as quick and straightforward as possible for schools and local authorities. The department have also developed a model registration form to help schools encourage parents to sign up for free school meals and provide guidance to Jobcentre Plus advisers so that they can make Universal Credit recipients aware that they may also be entitled to wider benefits, including free school meals. We continue to explore ways that the verification process can be improved.

As announced in the Spring Statement, the government is continuing to provide targeted cost of living support for households most in need. From April 2022, the government is providing an additional £500 million to help households with the cost of household essentials, on top of what we have already provided since October 2021, bringing the total funding for this support to £1 billion.

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