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 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.
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.
You can download and read the full report here.
This report is kindly funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
The Nuffield Foundation is an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance social well-being. It funds research that informs social policy, primarily in Education, Welfare, and Justice. The Nuffield Foundation is the founder and co-founder of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory. The Foundation has funded this project, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation. You can read more about their work here.
