A significant number of children living in poverty are missing out on Free School Meals and the Pupil Premium, new EPI report finds

A new report published by the Education Policy Institute (EPI), funded by the Nuffield Foundation, explores the strengths and weaknesses of free school meals (FSM) and Pupil Premium (PP) as measures for identifying disadvantaged pupils in England.  It finds significant differences between the number of children estimated to be living in poverty and those who are receiving FSM or PP. 

The report recommends measures to increase both uptake and eligibility for FSM and PP, to ensure government support is going to the children who need it the most,  alongside measures to increase their usefulness as indicators of disadvantage. This includes considering factors like ethnicity and language background in combination with FSM and PP when monitoring progress and experiences among different groups of children.

The report finds that:

• There are fewer children registered for FSM than estimated to be in poverty. This is due to a number of factors including the low-income threshold (£7,400 per year), under-registration, and eligibility rules that ignore factors like housing costs and family size.
   
• Under-registration for FSM is especially high among younger primary children and seems to be higher in more deprived local authorities, meaning support is not always reaching the children who need it most.   
   
• The gap between the number of children living in poverty and the number of children registered for FSM or receiving the PP is especially noticeable for children from certain communities, including those from Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian backgrounds. In these groups, poverty rates are much higher than FSM or PP registration suggests, meaning many children in need may not be receiving adequate support.  
   
• Children are signed up for PP if they are ever registered for FSM over the preceding six year period. But there are significant differences between schools and local authorities in how often children signed up for PP are registered as FSM-eligible. In some schools, only a small percentage of PP children are registered for FSM each year, while in others, nearly all are. To the extent that number of registrations for FSM represents persistence of poverty, this means that in some schools and local authorities, the PP group is far more disadvantaged and in longer-term poverty than in others. But funding and provision does not account for these different severities of disadvantage.   
   
• The composition of FSM and non-FSM groups has shifted over time, with the non-FSM group becoming more ethnically and linguistically diverse more quickly. For instance, the percentage of non-PP secondary-aged children who are White British fell from 80% in 2012 to 66% in 2023. Among PP secondary-aged children, the fall was from 67% to 59%. This reflects evolving patterns of demographics and disadvantage.
   
• Children who miss periods of school are less likely to access FSM. Children who are regularly enrolled in state school at each January census are more likely to get FSM, while those who have less stable access to schooling might miss out on the support they need.
   
• Protections introduced by the Department for Education alongside roll-out of Universal Credit has created unequal access to FSM, with some children keeping their eligibility status despite increased parental income, while others in similarly low-income families do not qualify   . This will continue to impact which children are signed up for PP in the coming years.
   
• Taken together, these findings raise concerns about the ability of disadvantaged families to access FSM and other benefits to which they might be entitled as well as the ability of schools to draw down government funding to support disadvantaged pupils.

The report recommends that:

• The government should conduct updated studies using linked cross-government data to find out how many eligible children are not claiming FSM or registered for PP.
   
• The government should expand the coverage of FSM eligibility, remove the current restrictions on FSM eligibility for pre-school children,  increase the salary threshold for families, and provide sufficient funding.
   
• The government should consider centrally automatically enrolling eligible children for FSM to ensure better coverage, especially for younger children.  Auto-enrolment has also been recommended by the Education Select Committee in the past week.*
   
• Researchers and policymakers should consider ethnicity and language background alongside FSM and PP, for example when comparing the experiences and outcomes of FSM/PP children to their peers. This is because the underlying characteristics of groups  of children registered for FSM/PP have changed over time and vary by place.  As these factors are not stable within the groups, they may often explain to some extent apparent differences in outcomes according FSM/PP status.

Dr Tammy Campbell, Director for Early Years, Inequalities and Wellbeing at the Education Policy Institute said:

“FSM has long been used as a key measure for multiple purposes within research and policymaking. Now it is time to review and improve its uses, and to look at alternatives, to better support economically disadvantaged children within the education system. Accurately and comprehensively identifying children living in poverty is the first step to serving these pupils.”

Background and Methodology

This report is part of a larger project funded by the Nuffield Foundation, which investigates who is registered for FSM and how this changes by age, time, and location. The aim is to understand how the FSM measure reflects educational disadvantage, and to explore ways to improve its use in policymaking and research.

Children are entitled to be registered for free school meals (FSM) if their family earns a very low income and is in receipt of certain social security benefits. As well as ensuring a child receives lunch at school, being registered for FSM is a gateway to substantial additional support and provision. For example, children are funded to attend the Holiday Activities and Food Programme. Many schools offer discounts for extra-curricular clubs and trips to FSM-registered pupils. Some local authorities offer additional grants and vouchers and subsidise the cost of school uniform if a child is recorded as FSM-eligible.

FSM registration at any point over a six-year period also means that a pupil is flagged for Pupil Premium. Pupil Premium children are required to be prioritised for enrichment and education within their school. This is intended to direct resources to children relatively less advantaged in their lives and wider context than their peers.

A corresponding pot of funding is allocated to each school according to the number of Pupil Premium children they have registered. This is currently £1,480 per child during the primary years, and £1,050 throughout secondary. The number of children eligible for FSM in the past six years is also factored into other aspects of education funding, including the National Funding Formula Schools Block.

The report uses data from the National Pupil Database (NPD), covering all children in pre-school, primary, and secondary state schools from 2003 to 2023 in England. We also compared this data with poverty estimates from the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) dataset, which is based on government surveys. The report looks at trends in FSM registration over time and by age group, changes in the characteristics of children identified as FSM-eligible, and how FSM data compares to other measures of poverty, like the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI). Additionally, we explored FSM registration and other measures of low income among pre-school children.

*The Education Select Committee recommended on February 28^th that the ‘‘Schools Bill' should auto-enrol children for free school meals.Link here.