Free School Meals

(asked on 28th June 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number and proportion of pupils attending secondary schools in (a) Ashfield constituency, (b) Nottinghamshire and (c) England who are eligible for free school meals but not claiming them.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 3rd July 2019

The number of students who are eligible for and are claiming free school meals (FSM) is published at national and school level in the underlying data of the ‘Schools, pupils and their characteristics’ publication. The 2019 publication is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019.

FSM are available to parents who are in receipt of certain qualifying benefits, including those that are means tested by the Department for Work and Pensions. To be eligible to receive FSM, a pupil or their parent must make a claim to the school for FSM. Until the claim is made, the pupil is not eligible for FSM. These figures do not include pupils who may be eligible for FSM but no claim has been made.

The underlying data file Schools_pupils_and_their_characteristics_2019_pupil_characteristics_UD.csv includes a column for phase of school, parliamentary constituency and local authority.

Reticulating Splines