Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support her Department provides to primary schools to ensure that all infants take up the provision of free school meals.

The Department for Education has provided substantial support to help schools deliver this policy. More than £1 billion of revenue funding is being provided to schools over two years on top of almost £175 million capital funding allocated this year to support them in improving their kitchen and dining facilities. The department has also allocated £22.5 million transitional funding in 2014-15 to help schools with 150 pupils or fewer to implement the policy. All this funding has been provided to ensure that the meals provided are of high quality, and particularly that all schools are able to offer hot meals.

The department has also set up an implementation support service, staffed by school food experts, which schools can contact for advice and support to help them to increase take-up of meals by their infant pupils.

Over 1.6 million infant pupils (85.2% of all infant pupils) took a free school meal on autumn census day in 2014. This is a rise of 1.3 million from the 0.3 million infant pupils who were estimated to have taken a free school meal in the January 2014 school census.