Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children were (a) entitled to, and (b) applied for free school meals in each local authority area in each of the last seven years.

The number of pupils eligible for and claiming free school meals is published in the annual ‘Schools, pupils and their characteristics’ statistical release is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2017.

For 2017, the number and percentage of pupils eligible for and claiming free school meals by local authority can be found in Tables 8a to 8e, in the ‘Local authority and regional tables: SFR28/2017’ section of the annual ‘Schools, pupils and their characteristics: January 2017’ statistical release.

Information for earlier years (from 2010 onwards) is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-and-pupil-numbers.