The Free School Meals (Automatic Registration of Eligible Children) Bill 2024-25 is listed for second reading on 14 March 2025. The bill would require the automatic registration of all children eligible for free school meals in England.
The Free School Meals (Automatic Registration of Eligible Children) Bill is a private member’s bill introduced by Peter Lamb. It had its first reading in the Commons on 16 October 2024. Second reading debate is scheduled to be held on 14 March 2025. It is bill 19 of the 2024-25 parliamentary session.
The bill would require the automatic registration of all children eligible for free school meals in England.
The bill would require local authorities in England to identify each child of school age resident in its area who is eligible for free school meals, and also require state-funded schools that identify a child eligible for free school meals to inform the local education authority. The Secretary of State would be required, by regulations, to provide local education authorities, schools, and any other relevant departments or agencies with the powers necessary to obtain, process and exchange the information necessary for the carrying out of these duties.
State-funded schools would be required to provide a free school meal to every qualifying child identified to the relevant school by a local education authority.
Local education authorities would be required to provide the means for a parent or guardian of a qualifying child to opt out of these arrangements.
Local education authorities and schools would be required to take all reasonable steps to preserve the confidentiality and right to privacy of qualifying children and their parents or guardians in respect of the related information, information-sharing and administrative arrangements.
The Secretary of State would be enabled to make regulations to make provision for the definition of the term “state-funded school” for the purposes of this bill. Relevant regulations would be made by statutory instrument.
The bill extends to England and Wales, but as education is a devolved policy area would have effect in England only.
The Department for Education sets out eligibility requirements for free school meals (FSM) in England:
Your child may be able to get free school meals if you get any of the following:
Children who get paid these benefits directly, instead of through a parent or guardian, can also get free school meals.
Your child may also get free school meals if you get any of these benefits and your child is both:
Children in reception, year 1 and year 2 will receive free school meals automatically through universal infant free school meals.
It is necessary for parents to register their children for FSM; there is currently no national or universally used mechanism through which they are automatically registered as eligible. Some local authorities, however, are running automatic enrolment schemes (see later section).
The Department for Education does not routinely collect information on the number of pupils that are entitled to Free School Meals (FSM) but do not make a claim. It is therefore largely unknown how many children are currently not receiving the benefit and corresponding pupil premium funding. There have been estimates at a national level: In a 2013 report on pupils not claiming free school meals the department estimated around 11% of pupils entitled to FSM were not claiming them.
The Department for Education publishes information on FSM eligibility, as recorded in the school census at January of each year, within its dataset on schools, pupils and their characteristics; latest data is for the 2023/24 academic year. A pupil is recorded in the school census as eligible for FSM if they meet the eligibility criteria and their parents make a claim.
At January 2024, 24.6% (around 2.1 million) of state-school pupils in England were entitled to benefit-based free school meals. This is up from 23.8% in 2023.
The online eligibility checking system (ECS) launched under the Coalition Government can be used to assess eligibility for free school meals. Guidance on the Eligibility Checking Service for Local Authorities (PDF) is also available.
Potential auto-enrolment of children for free school meals has regularly been debated in parliament in recent years.
In 2016, Frank Field asked a parliamentary question about using housing benefit data to check eligibility for free meals. The minister said the then Conservative Government did not see this solution as sustainable:
Edward Timpson: We understand that some local authorities have found this approach can be an effective tactic. However, it does not provide a complete or sustainable solution to automatic registration for FSM. We do not consider further legislation to be necessary for this particular approach.
To support FSM registration, the department provides an online eligibility checking facility; and a model registration form for schools to use within their enrolment process.
The department is exploring what opportunities exist in the longer term to make FSM registration processes more efficient. [PQ 56826, 13 December 2016]
Successive governments have been supportive of local authorities exploring ways to improve registration. In March 2024, the then schools minister under the Conservative Government, Damian Hinds, said:
The department has looked at the issue of under-registration and considers there to be merit in local authorities exploring initiatives to maximise take up and to better understand the barriers that prevent such take up, whilst ensuring adherence to legal and data protection constraints.
The department is currently aware of a number of different approaches being trialled by local authorities to maximise take up of FSM. The department has not provided formal guidance to support these activities, nor has the department endorsed any particular approach to increasing FSM take-up for benefits-related FSM and universal approaches, but the department continues to engage with key stakeholders on this issue. [PQ 16885 [Free School Meals], 7 March 2024]
The Labour Government have set out a similar position in response to a recent parliamentary question:
Stephen Morgan: There are currently around 2.1 million pupils eligible for and claiming free school meals (FSM). The department recognises the vital role played by FSM and encourages all eligible families to take up their entitlement. To make this as easy as possible the department provides the Eligibility Checking System, which allows local authorities to quickly verify eligibility for FSM.
Further to this, the department is aware of a range of measures aimed at maximising take up of FSM, including through approaches being trialled by local authorities. We welcome local authorities taking action to ensure government support reaches families, subject to them meeting legal and data protections requirements.
The department is working closely with the Department for Work and Pensions to develop a child poverty strategy to reduce child poverty by tackling its root causes and giving every child the best start in life.
As with all government programmes, the department will keep its approach to FSM under continued review. [PQ 24015 [Free School Meals], 24 January 2025]
In February 2025, the Education Committee report on Scrutiny of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill included a recommendation for automatic enrolment, saying:
That all children who are entitled to free school meals (FSM) should be automatically enrolled to receive them. Children aged four to 16 may be entitled to FSM if their parents or carers receive income-related benefits such as Universal Credit. But experts told the Committee that one in 10 children who are currently eligible miss out because of language barriers or difficulty with the admin process, and that failing to legislate for auto-enrolment would be a “missed opportunity” to feed hungry children at school.
In March 2025, the Education Policy Institute published a report on Who has been registered for free school meals and pupil premium in the National Pupil Database? which recommended that the government should consider centrally automatically enrolling eligible children for FSM to ensure better coverage, especially for younger children.
The report said that there are fewer children registered for FSM than estimated to be in poverty, and that under-registration for FSM is especially high among younger primary children.
A number of local authorities are running pilots or schemes that aim to automatically enrol children for FSM, with ‘opt-outs’ for parents who do not wish for their children to receive the meals.
The following links provide a sample of these programmes:
The Fix Our Food research programme also aims to automatically register children who are eligible but previously unregistered for free school meals. See University of York, Pilot project provides free school meals to thousands more children, 23 October 2024.
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