Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of primary school pupils are in receipt of free school meals in Halifax constituency.

Data for the number of pupils eligible for free school meals in each school in England are available in the underlying data in the annual ‘Schools, pupils and their characteristics’ statistical release.[1]

The number and proportion of pupils, attending primary school in Halifax constituency in Calderdale local authority, who were known to be eligible for free school meals[2] in 2016 is given below.

These figures do not include infant pupils who are not eligible for free school meals based on the standard criteria, but who can receive a meal under the universal infant free school meals programme.

Source: School Census, January 2016

[1] www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-and-pupil-numbers - click on the relevant year and then ‘underlying data.’ The data are contained in files with ‘Schools_Pupils’ in the title.

[2] Not all children assessed as eligible for free school meals will have taken a lunch on census day.