Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the number of children that have required access to free school meals in each of the last five years in Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency.

The department publishes data on free school meals (FSM) in its annual ‘Schools, pupils and their characteristics’ publication, available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics/2024-25. The most recent data was published on 5 June, and the next publication is planned for summer 2026.

To access FSM data for the Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency for the 2024/25 academic year, refer to the file titled 'School level underlying data 2025 (CSV, 22 MB)', located in the 'Additional supporting files' section.

To access data from previous academic years, visit the 'Releases in this series' section on the publication website. Then, locate the 'School level underlying data' file under 'Additional supporting files'.