AIBU - free school meals application against my wishes.

[GlitterSand]

Two years ago I became eligible to claim free school meals,
I do not need the assistance so declined the offer.
The local council sent me a silly amount of letters about being entitled to claim, I phoned them and asked them to stop, explained that I didn't need to claim and asked them to make a note on my 'file' not to contact me again.
However, within a few months it started again I ignored them until I received a letter that basically said 'you are entitled to claim this so we are going to put in a claim on your behalf'
This annoyed me and I sent them a letter telling them that I do not give them permission to ever make a claim for FSMs on my behalf, that I wanted it marked on my file that I never want a claim for FSMs to be made in my name.
Someone from the council called me and apologised he said he made a note on my file and I would not be contacted again.

My DC has just started secondary school and for the second day in a row, his student account was not charged for the meal he had.
I just called the school and they have told me that his account has not been charged because he is in receipt of FSM, I told her this is a mistake and she is going to look into it and call me back.

I'm currently on hold to the council.

I'm so angry, how dare they put in a claim without my knowledge or permission and against my explicit request not to.
AIBU to be so annoyed?

I'm just posting to vent really, to try to calm down before I speak to anyone, but I'm just so angry that they can go against my wishes and put in a claim for a benefit that I do not want.

OK so at the moment we get a small amount of child tax credit a week because my partners income has gone up. We do not receive any working tax credit but again we still wouldn't qualify for FSM because the household income is higher than 16,000.

So I'm still confused how OP can be working so much to pay such large amounts of tax but qualify for FSM. None of this makes sense

A lot of people don't seem to understand how taxation and benefits work. Someone choosing not to take a benefit they don't need is being decent and principled, not selfish!

"Let's all quit our jobs so every kid in the nation is eligible for FSM and then all the schools will get buckets of cash from the government!"

FSM is an odd thing though as it benefits whole school too though as school gets money too

Possibly, High. I’m not completely sure about the income thresholds. If you got working tax credit run on when you stopped claiming wtc, then you would have been eligible for fsm during those 4 weeks and the school would then be able to claim PP because any child who has been eligible for fsm in the past 6 years is eligible for PP funding.

TAs and teachers will lose their jobs. Trips will not be arrranged. Any extra curricular activities (if there are any left- especially at primary level) will be cancelled. Intervention programs will be cancelled.
Those entitled to PP who do not allow the schools to claim that funding are partly responsible (of course most of the blame must lie with the government) but I don’t understand why any human being wouldnt do everything in their power to help schools at the moment. I teach at a school with 80% PP. Financially it makes a world of difference.

The school cuts website makes sobering reading. schoolcuts.org.uk/#!/

The nearest mainstream secondary to me is down £713 per child from 2015.

So are schools in poor areas better funded than those in affluent areass?

So are schools in poor areas better funded than those in affluent areass?

They are certainly likely to be getting much more pupil premium money yes.

The point remains if your that well off, why are you claiming whichever benefit it is that entitles you to FSM??

I think there's a lot of lying from the OP.
Firstly FSM is now called Pupil Premium, Ever6 for data purposes. This means if you have ever been eligible for and claimed free schools at all during your child's school life, the eligibility lasts for 6 years, e.g. if you claimed in Reception it would last until Year 6, even if your circumstances have changed.
Secondly we have a Pupil Premium form from the council that we give to parents. They have to fill it in and it gets sent off to see if they are eligible. Unless a parent does that we and the council do not know if they are or not. The parent has to declare if they are in receipt of certain benefits and then send proof of said benefit. They wouldn't just sign you up for it. We have to push PP to try and get parents to sign up.
I think OP's 'maintenance' comes from non-declared income and she doesn't want to claim in case it gets flagged up and found out.

Oh @onetimeposter is back! What attitude of mine is it that’s responsible for OP feeling embarrassed about being eligible for FSM?

Ime PP is given so schools can adequately deal with the issues arising from poverty-low attainment, poorer attendence, inability for parents to fund educational opportunities eg school trips, need to support parents socially and have a family support worker and so on.
So presumably a school which has a lower PP % will need less funding. Is that right?

To claim FSM if you are claiming tax credits but not claiming working tax credits (to claim working tax you need to be working 16+ hours a week?) so OP can’t be working full time? You can also claim if you are claiming income support (to claim income support you must have less than £16,000 in savings, a child under 5 or a disabled child?).

Unless OP is on a very high wage working under 16 hours a week then I don’t see how she’s so well off that she doesn’t need FSM. But I maybe wrong?

"I file tax returns every year and pay a large amount of tax. for the last two years I have been entitled to a small amount of Child tax credits, its less than £20 a month but I feel that given the amount of tax I pay every year I am justified in claiming back what I am entitled to in child tax credits."

Child Tax Credit is a benefit (not a tax rebate) so why is that okay but FSM not okay?

More importantly, how do your local council know you receive child tax credits, if you haven't told them, GlitterSand?

Assuming you haven't told them, I would think you should certainly be getting back in touch with them to find out how they know and also to find out if your child's Primary School (either together with the Council, or without the Council knowing it was them) processed a FSM claim in your name.

Onetimeposter
You would be correct with what you're saying, however, state schools are ridiculously underfunded anyway so every little helps.
Finding the budget to pay for resources, covering staff absences, paying for invention work etc is so tricky.
Given funding, my job is in jeopardy which will have a negative effect on the whole school. One less member of staff when teachers, TAs and support staff are already sparse.
That being said, places where PP is high do need the extra support more. In my experience, it tends to pay for an extra TA in reception which is fantastic and helps with early intervention and provides extra support throughout the school

Giving the benefit of the doubt, my guess woud be that as your child just started secondary school, it'll be a computer automated situation adding him to the FSM list due to your eligibility when he was given a place, much as parents who do not apply for a place at secondary schools for their children typically automatically get one anyways even when they inform the council beforehand that they will not take it up, though as your council has previous form of doing so either they're more reliant on computers or someone is doing it for you or some other oddity. However, as others who know the system far better than I have discussed, there does seem to be something odd.

I have mixed feelings on the wider issues brought up in this thread. It's difficult to balance parental rights and eligibility particularly through income with children's rights and access to their needs. Just as we cannot assume a child eligible for FSM is struggling or such, we cannot assume a child not eligible is not struggling or that even when parents have quite a lot of income that their child's needs are being met but we have to work with the tools we currently have and do what we can. FSM is one tool used to help deal with some of the issues children and young people have based on the evidence we have, as imperfectly as it is often implemented.

I'm not eligible due to WTC and I don't particularly see the reason not to take it up but I can see it as annoying if you're constantly telling the council one thing and they're ignoring that while also seeing the argument put forth that it's the child's benefit for them to access food and other things and whether while at a school you've agreed to send them to whether a child should have their entitled access while at said school denied by a parent... it is a grey area for me knowing parents like my own who had plenty-on-paper and proud of it - and kids ending up going without because that's what the parents decided and others wouldn't challenge the parents or believe naice parents would do such things.

I've just checked the criteria for FSM and you must be claiming other benefits in order to qualify. If you are so well off why are you to claim other benefits and not this one?

Im really puzzled by this

Excellent post geekinderby

Back to pretending you didn’t say it again, normal service has resumed

I can see that maybe it should be an automatic allocation with DWP giving extra money direct to the school. This isn't the case though and doesn't justify the school riding roughshod over the op's wishes. O can't believe how many people are justifying it tbh. Plenty of people make shit decisions but if they're entitled to make them then public bodies have to respect them.

What's your problem?
My 3 DC had to have FSM and I was very grateful. No stigma. No problem.
No reflection on me or them or their intellect.
Eldest went to Oxford, DS and DD2 got good degrees at good universities.
Their kids are not eligible for FSM.

Maintenance isn't taken into account when calculating benefits. So you can have 2 single mums. One earns say £15k take home and gets no maintenance. The other earns nothing and gets £15k maintenance. Mum 2 will get far more in benefits than mum 1, FSM etc despite having the same income. It's deeply unfair.

@onetimeposter, do you have a better system in mind?

Using fsm to decide pp is a proxy measure rather than a perfect system. Clearly some schools use it badly but we do need a way of allocating additional funding to even up the imbalance in intake between schools. Preferably one that’s cost effective and manageable.

That does sound massively unfair. Why aren’t all sources of income treated as, you know, income??

That does sound massively unfair. Why aren’t all sources of income treated as, you know, income??

Because child support can be whipped away in an instant and our government has zero interest in forcing non paying NRPs to pay it. A NRP could pay for 6 weeks, parent with care has to inform relevant benefits agencies, all benefits stop for 6 weeks while claim is reassessed and in the meantime NRP stops paying again. RP has no income. At all. So it’s not a reliable income.

Yes, of course.