Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of adjusting the eligibility criteria for free school meals so as to maintain the proportion of children who are eligible at the same level as in academic year 2023-24.

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 for 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. As with all policies, the government keeps the approach to FSM under review.