Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate her Department has made of the number of children who are (a) eligible and (b) not registered for free school meals.

The department publishes statistics annually which detail the number of pupils registered to receive free meals. The latest data shows that over 2 million pupils are registered for benefits-based free school meals (FSM), which is 23.8% of all pupils. Close to 1.3 million additional pupils benefit from universal infant free school meals. Taken together, over one third of pupils receive free school meals.

The department does not collect data on the proportion of pupils that may be entitled to FSM but do not make a claim. Therefore, the department has not made a recent estimate on the number of children not registered for free school meals.