Changes to free school meal eligibility…

[AlwaysCoffee25]

”As of April 1st, 2025, the "transitional protection" for free school meals, which allowed continued eligibility even if income increased, will end. New applicants after this date, earning above £7,400 net per annum, will no longer be eligible”

I don’t see the big deal, if you need to reapply you can.

Whilst I think in an ideal world all children should free school meals the reality is we can’t sustain every concession as a county and stopping continued eligibility if your financial circumstances change seems sensible to me 🧐

Although it seems odd timing with free breakfast being introduced (it hasn’t reached my DC’s school) the cynic in me thinks it’s because they know the take up on breakfast will be significantly lower than lunches.

That sounds like Ever FSM 6. It does mean they’re entitled still to FSM but the govermemt recognises that educationally most children who have recieved school meals in the last 6 years are more likely to be at a disadvantage educationally.

@Daisymae23 the cost of school meals pales in insignificance to nursery fees and at one point I had two kids in private nursery so believe me I know.

It's £7400 per year of earned income. Not including benefits, universal credit etc.
If your household earned income is £7400 per year then this will be topped up with benefits. It won't be all you have to live on.

As a teacher, I wouldn't ever want to see a child go hungry. However, I do think the current situation of universal free school meals for all key stage 1 children (not means tested) is utterly ridiculous. I reach at a small rural primary school and we have 90 children in key stage 1, most of whom have the free school meals on offer most day. I know that approximately 5 of them are in low income families and NEED this help. It's a terrible use of public money. 85 of those parents should be paying for their children's lunches.

There’s no reason why the state (i.e. other taxpayers) should be funding lunches for those who can afford them.

Of course meals should be free for parents on a low income, but otherwise I would far rather the money was spent on reducing class sizes or additional learning support for those who need it.

Yes but still feels like it will be an absolute kick in the teeth that my taxes have funded every one else’s free school meals but not my child’s.

@Daisymae23 i don’t understand why? This hasn’t changed the eligibility criteria?

Oh true… I guess I was thinking back to what I was reading that they are thinking if scrapping it for infant fsm.

Absolutely absurd waste of funding to give it to families who were no longer eligible. The parents should have to apply annually to the local council.

I do suspect this is a sneaky way of reducing pupil premium to schools though, which is very bad news. They’re desperately underfunded.

It's another policy that looks good in headline form, but won't make savings really (as now more staff and hours will be needed for the renewals) and the overarching impact on schools will be negative. And that negative impact will affect all pupils.

Why's it absurd? 90% of parents who were eligible when their child started reception will not go on to be much better off. Maybe they'll go from earning 6k to 10k for example.

You know the threshold used to be 16k before they reduced it to 7.4k

What is absurd is that every kid in reception to year 2 gets free meals even millionaires, what is the point in that?

And yes pupil premium funding will go right down because barely anyone earns less than 7.4k for a long time. That's less than twelve hours work a week even on minimum wage.

You couldn’t even pay for a 1 bed flat on this wage round these parts. And I’m in the North!

Abominable that it’s so low.

@AlwaysCoffee25 I think it must be the opposite in DS' school, they try to get the kids having a cooked meal finished and out of the door so they can clean up and get the area ready again before the next lesson - they only have the one hall (no separate dining room) which is then in constant use. Whereas the packed lunch kids eat everything/ bin their own stuff/ take leftovers home, meaning it's not so much of an issue!

I think it's not necessarily absurd but it is blatantly unfair which is possibly worse. For a system like this to work then it needs to be seen to be fair and targeting the right children. Very few people will have a problem with funding the poorest children and using a threshold creates an objective measure of who should get the benefit and who doesn't. There will always be those just above any threshold that feel hard done by but I also think that most people accept that there has to be a threshold somewhere and this is just how things go.
It must be incredibly irritating though to just miss out on these benefits and then realise that families far richer than you are recieving the additional benefit because their income once fell below the threshold. It makes a mockery of the whole system and beings the whole system into question completely unnecessarily.

Where are you getting 90% from? Multiple posters here have personal experience of families being eligible who are now on much higher salaries.

Pupil premium funding should be linked to something else, maybe the catchment area rather than eligibility for free school meals.

For a system like this to work then it needs to be seen to be fair and targeting the right children. Very few people will have a problem with funding the poorest children and using a threshold creates an objective measure of who should get the benefit and who doesn't.

The point is that it has been targeting the right children.

Children whose parents earn until 7k aren't suddenly going to be earning 50k in a couple of years. They're likely to be in other low paid, unstable employment and repeatedly bounce between being eligible and not.

The current system gives children, and schools, a level of stability. It also takes annual deadlines away from the chaotic families - again this benefits children and schools.

The cost of the admin of this is something that I'd bet hasn't been factored in. Something that will outweigh the savings I'd bet.

We are a small family and I completely agree with it. You used to have to reapply if circumstances changed. When they made it that get it once and you get it for good we qualified because I was out of work for 6 months. My youngest was in first year of high school and would have received it for another 5 years even if I'd gone straight into a well paid job. Ridiculous system.

Fair enough I just think the threshold should go back to being 16k. 7.4k is too low in my opinion.

Makes far more sense than the current situation of everyone in reception to year 2 getting free meals including millionaires who could easily pay for their own meal.

Multiple posters here have personal experience of families being eligible who are now on much higher salaries.

a couple of MN posters knowing people who jumped from earning less than 7k to earning a fortune is not an example of how it works generally.

I worked with poor and deprived families where, in 15 years, I never had a single family move from being eligible to not eligible for more than 2 years.

I wouldn't pretend my 100% experience was the same everywhere, but I'd put a lot of money it being more common than the vast salary increases talked about on here.

It's also dreadful timing for schools to be losing funding when budgets are screwed so much already

Zero looking at the bigger picture in this one

There’s literally a poster on this thread who was eligible indefinitely because she and her husband lost their jobs for a few months during COVID. How is that fair?

I’d support means-testing to include KS1 but agree with the threshold. Nobody is actually taking home 7k with a child, they’d have extensive benefits on top.

Yeah multiple posters on here apparently know someone who won the lottery etc etc.

I just don't think most earning less than 7k at the start of reception will go on to earn loads more over the next few years. Myself personally started working more hours when the kids went to school, still far from rich just earn more than 7k

@Scrubberdubber I said myself my colleague qualified, she was a student at the time with small children and so rightly got the assistance, now - 8 years later, she's a chartered accountant. Still qualifies though. Never said nor claimed ot have won any lottery or suddenly have this random unearned fortune.

Another friend of mine who is a single parent student training to become a nurse will very likely earn over the threshold once she completes her studies too - the point is, it isn't only given to those who are in poverty and stuck there - the whole point is aiming at those who still qualify when they don't need to anymore! no one is saying it should be taken away from those who qualify year on year.

How can she still qualify after 8 years? It last until your child finishes primary or secondary. Neither of those last 8 years.

I think that there should be more people on a reduced rate, say £1 a day, even at KS1, not free.

Part of the reason that the public finances are where they are has been the increase in things that have no charge at the point of use, instead of a reduced rate. There was not free bus travel for many people of pensionable age until the noughties, you paid to go to the major museums, for example.

It's not indefinite. It's to the end of the education period. So it stops at the end of primary, for example.

It's not forever.