Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of children in primary schools in Wallasey constituency were eligible for free school meals in each year since 2010.

The number of proportion of children in primary schools in Wallasey constituency who were eligible and claiming free school meals (FSM) is provided in the attached table.

Since April 2018, protections have been in place for FSM eligibility while Universal Credit is introduced nationwide. This has been the main driver in the increase in the proportion of pupils eligible for and claiming free school meals as pupils continue to become eligible but fewer pupils stop being eligible.

This data is published at national and school level in the underlying data of the annual ‘Schools, pupils and their characteristics’ statistical release. The 2019 publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019.