Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the potential impact of the increase in employer National Insurance contributions on the average cost of providing free school meals.

The department is providing schools and high needs settings with over £930 million in the 2025/26 financial year to support them with their increased National Insurance contributions (NICs) costs. This support is additional to the £2.3 billion increase to core school funding announced at the Autumn Budget 2024.

Schools will have flexibility in how they use funding through their NICs grant allocations to meet their overall cost increases as a result of the NICs changes.