Tackling child hunger by auto enrolment in Free School Meals
26 June
As a benefit designed to make sure that no child from a low income household goes hungry, the Free School Meals scheme gives children access to healthy meals during term time and school holidays.
The scheme is worth £1,400 a year to families and is also a gateway benefit for other discretionary support. It’s also the mechanism by which schools get extra funding, known as the Pupil Premium, worth up to £1,050 a year per pupil.
Children who receive Free School Meals have reduced absences and improved concentration, yet across the country over £231 million in Free School Meals goes unclaimed each year. In the capital alone the figure is nearly £15 million.
Lack of awareness, administrative complexity and time based ‘I’ll do it later’ behaviours means that many eligible families are missing out.
Three London Boroughs have made it their mission to tackle child hunger and increase the take up of Free School Meals and Pupil Premium. They have used a data-led approach to proactively identify families that were eligible but missing out. The families were contacted before being automatically enrolled to receive the support.
To date, the three councils have given nearly 1,000 students Free School Meals worth £460 each a year and generated over £3 million in school funding in the process.
With guest speaker Mia Polovina, Data Science and Insight Lead, Lewisham Council
Listen back to hear
- Eligibility for Free School Meals – the national picture
- Food poverty – Free School Meals and the impact of the Housing Support Fund
- Case study from Lewisham Council
- Data driven solutions to societal change
- Q&A discussion with our panel
Listen back to our speakers
Around 470,000 children are missing out on free school meals despite being eligible for them. One in five schools are now running food banks and this rises to one in three schools in deprived areas. So we know that families with children are experiencing high poverty rates and all of these statistics paint quite a stark picture when we're talking about giving children a free lunch.
We have auto enrolled around 560 pupils. We have a high level of deprivation in some areas of Lewisham so it's great that families who live in these areas can take up this benefit and children are getting healthy meals. In terms of the Pupil Premium, it was a funding boost of £1.2 million for schools
There's a lot of administration for people claiming Free School Meals both on the local authority side and also on the part of the families. A solution is using data to identify families that are eligible and not claiming certain benefits to boost take up and deliver that extra support that's on the table waiting to be claimed.
