Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number of pupils eligible for free school meals who were unable to access those meals because they were (a) self-isolating and (b) under local lockdown arrangements in each of the last two weeks for which data is available.

We continue to work with stakeholders to provide advice and support to schools. Guidance has been prepared jointly by the Lead Association for Catering in Education (LACA), Public Health England and the Department for Education, setting out some general principles for putting together a food parcel, which will allow parents and carers to prepare simple and healthy lunches for their children at home across the week. This guidance is available on LACA’s website here:
https://laca.co.uk/laca-view/free-school-meals-guidance-producing-food-parcels.

A further updated version of our guidance will be published shortly and the current version is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-free-school-meals-guidance/covid-19-free-school-meals-guidance-for-schools.

Now schools and their kitchens are open, normal free school meal provision resumes, enabling children to have a nutritious healthy meal at school. Schools should provide meal options for all pupils who are in school and meals should be available free of charge to all infant pupils and all pupils who meet the benefits-related free school meals eligibility criteria. As set out in our guidance, schools are able to support pupils eligible for benefits-related free school meals who have to remain at home due to self-isolation with food parcels.

Approximately 88% of pupils on roll in state-funded schools were in attendance on 10 September. Attendance estimates include pupils absent for COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 related reasons. Further data on school attendance of free school meal eligible children will be published in due course.