Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the potential impact of free school meals on educational attainment.

The department has not recently made a formal assessment of the links between free school meals and educational outcomes.

Nutritious food plays an important role in the development of healthy eating habits and ensures that pupils can concentrate and learn. That is why the department spends over £1 billion annually providing free meals to the greatest ever proportion of school children. Over one third of children are now eligible for free school meals, compared to one in six in 2010. This increase has been driven by the introduction of Universal Infant Free School Meals in 2014, as well as the department’s generous Universal Credit transitional protections put in place in 2018.