Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the data that his Department holds on eligibility for free school meals by ethnicity.

The department publishes the number of pupils who are eligible for free school meals in the ‘Schools, pupils and their characteristics' publications, which are available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-and-pupil-numbers.

The breakdown of eligibility for free school meals by ethnicity is not available in the publication, however this is available on request. There were 346,055 (18.0%) BAME pupils eligible for free school meals in January 2019.