Plans for over 11,000 Suffolk school children to lose free school meals delayed

Government loses vote on plans to restrict entitlement to free school meals.

New government rules to restrict entitlement to free school meals for new recipients appear to have been delayed by six months after a defeat in the Lords.

Under government plans, families receiving Universal Credit and earning more than £7,400 a year will no longer be eligible for free school meals. The proposals which were due to take effect from 1st April will affect free school meals for children in year three and above. Transitional protections are proposed, so that no child currently receiving free school meals will have them taken away.

The Children's Society suggests that an estimated 11,600 children living in poverty in Suffolk could miss out on a free school meal under the new regulations. The Society believes that this will create a cliff edge for low income families as they take on more work and push themselves over the earnings limit and lose the free school meals.

However, on 20th March, Peers voted by just seven votes (167-160) to postpone the shake-up for at least six months, allowing time for a "poverty impact assessment".

Liberal Democrat education spokesman Lord Storey said, '"if the plans went ahead, Prime Minister Theresa May would not only be remembered for taking Britain out of the EU" but also for "taking away from many children their only hot meal of the day". He argued there was a "lack of humanity" in the measures.

Up to now, all families receiving Universal Credit (UC) have been eligible for free school meals. If the government was to continue this policy, almost every child in poverty would receive a free school meal once UC is fully rolled out (expected by 2022).
Although the Government have indicated that they would look at this policy again before the full roll out of UC, the Children's Society and others had hoped the government would take this opportunity to ensure that in future every child in poverty would get the free school meals they desperately need. A spokesperson for the Society explained that if the government continued to allow every family on UC to receive free school meals, 2.8 million children would be entitled.
We know that only about 65 per cent of children who are eligible for free school meals actually take them up. (Often because parents don't realise their children are entitled.) On that basis, they would expect about 1.8 million children to take up free school meals in England if everyone on UC was eligible.
The government's plan to introduce a means test to free school meals will reduce the total number of children who are entitled to free school meals to 1 million. Assuming a 65 per cent take up rate, that means only about 650,000 children will be getting a free hot meal at school.
If everyone on UC were entitled to free school meals, then by the time it was fully rolled out, 1.8 million children would have a free school meal every day. The new means test will see only about 650,000 children on free school meals. That's a difference of just over a million.

Local Universal Credit recipients are being encouraged to sign up for free school meals thereby promoting the additional Pupil Premium funding that schools receive.

Background

Since September 2014, all infant pupils (Years 1 & 2) in England's schools have been entitled to a free hot meal at lunchtime every day regardless of income. This was an initiative of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who launched the plan at the Liberal Democrats conference in 2013.
The government uses entitlement to free school meals as a measure of deprivation.

In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government ended entitlement to free meals for thousands of children.

Link with Pupil Premium:

Introduced in April 2011, as a Liberal democrats flagship policy, the pupil premium is allocated to children who are looked after by the local authority, those who have been eligible for Free School Meals at any point in the last six years (also known as Ever 6 FSM) and for children whose parents are currently serving in the armed forces. The school receives £1300 for each of these children. Children who have been looked after under local authority care for more than one day are awarded a premium of £1900.

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