20,000 more pupils accessing free school meals (FSM) due to new trial scheme

A new trial has led to thousands more pupils being able to access FSM.
Admin & Finance22 Oct 23:00
The National College
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A pilot project run by research programme Fix Our Food has identified thousands of pupils eligible but not registered for FSM and automatically enrolled them. The scheme has been implemented in roughly 20 LAs so far and provided FSM to approximately 20,000 more pupils.

Under normal circumstances, eligible families have to register their children to get access to FSM. The DfE has encouraged all families who qualify but are not automatically registered to sign up.

There are currently 2.1 million pupils in England registered for FSM, making up 24.6 percent of the pupil population. FSM saves families £500 per year in lunch costs.

To be eligible for FSM, families need to be on universal credit (UC) and have an annual household income of below £7,400 after tax. The thinktank Policy in Practice has estimated that there could be up to 470,000 families that meet the FSM criteria but are not registered. The difficulties facing eligible families registering include language barriers, lack of understanding of the eligibility criteria and a stigma around sharing financial information.

Researchers behind the new scheme have called for the government to automatically enrol the eligible families that are missing out on the support by having them opt out of FSM rather than opt in.

40 additional councils are now working with Fix Our Food to find out if they could implement the scheme. Councils already participating include County Durham, Wakefield, Lambeth, North Yorkshire and Middlesbrough.

According to Fix Our Food, the additional registrations have brought in millions of pounds in funding for schools through the pupil premium. The scheme, however, requires a significant amount of paperwork to identify eligible families, and researchers have said they want the government to bring together datasets from different departments to ease the process.

A headteacher from a participating school in Lambeth said that he used the additional funding for residential trips and extra mentoring and tuition. More than half of the pupils in his school were already registered for FSM, over double the national average, but the trial scheme identified an additional 15 pupils that were able to receive the support.

As we have covered in our Compliance Digest article, MPs will debate the automatic registration of pupils eligible for FSM in Parliament, with a bill addressing the issue having been introduced earlier this month.

The government has committed to tackling child poverty, but not to rolling out the trial scheme nationwide. A spokesperson said that one of the first priorities was the rollout of free breakfast clubs in primary schools, which is expected to begin in April 2025.

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