Special Educational Needs: Free School Meals
(asked on 12th September 2016) - View Source
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of pupils attending state-funded (a) grammar schools and (b) schools that are not grammar schools (i) are eligible for free schools meals and (ii) have special educational needs.
The Government does not collect data on pupils who have social educational needs.
The number and proportion of pupils known to be eligible for and claiming free school meals are set out below.
| Eligible for and claiming FSM |
State-funded grammars | 2.5% (4,237 of 166,517 pupils) |
Non-selective state-funded secondary schools | 13.8% (416,279 of 3,026,901 pupils) |
Source: January 2016 school census return. The data includes all pupils on roll, including those over 16.
The consultation document Schools that work for Everyone proposes that we should seek to identify and support those families which are ‘just managing’; those on modest incomes who might not be in receipt of benefits but nevertheless are just about managing. The document also proposes that we should place conditions on new selective schools so that they attract more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that they should work with non-selective schools to raise standards for all pupils.