A report from MPs has called for auto-enrolment for free school meals, to prevent thousands of children from going hungry. The education select committee called for the change “without delay” as it warns that pupils who are eligible are missing out as their parents have not signed up the scheme.
As of June 2024, approximately 2.1 million children were known to be eligible for free school meals in England alone. They made up around a quarter of all pupils.
A spokesperson for the Department for Education (DfE) said that the government has “welcomed” the proposal. They added that it would carefully consider the recommendations that have been made.
Families in England are eligible to apply for free school meals if they receive universal credit and have a household income that falls below £7,400 annually after taxes, not to mention other benefits. But the committee was given evidence from an expert who estimated that around a tenth of those in poverty are not receiving it.
Kate Antsey, of the Child Poverty Action Group told MPs recently that language barriers or difficulty with administration process were among the reasons for this. Another estimate from April 2024 by think tank Policy in Practice says that around 471,000 children are missing out on free school meals.
A cross-party education committee said called on the government to change the rules by using the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that is currently making its way through parliament. This would bring about auto-enrolment and remove the need for parents to manually enrol in free school meals.
The report concluded that a failure to address this would be a “missed opportunity” to feed children at school. A low uptake, it added, was contributing to hunger at school among children.
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