Free School Meals

(asked on 5th June 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what his Department's policy is on unclaimed free school meal credit money.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 11th June 2019

It is important that all pupils have access to healthy and nutritious meals at school and we would encourage all eligible children and parents to claim their free meals.

Free school meals (FSM) are intended as a benefit in kind, rather than a cash benefit, and our primary interest is that schools meet their legal duties to provide nutritious free lunches to eligible children.

We trust school leaders to make the best decisions in the interests of their pupils and it is right that they have flexibility around how they deliver FSM. We know that some schools will allow pupils to carry over their benefit, however we would not want to instruct schools to follow any specific approach nationally. We will consider how we can share the very best practice around the delivery of FSM.

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