CYP Now - Free school meal eligibility changes ‘could skew attainment gap data’, researchers warn

Changes to eligibility criteria for free school meals will make it “impossible” to correctly track the attainment of disadvantaged children over the next decade, researchers have warned.

Some 300,000 children became eligible for free school meals during the pandemic. Picture: Adobe Stock

A new report from the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER) notes that the number of children eligible for free school meals increased by 300,000 between January 2020 and June 2021.

Those who became eligible during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic were “disproportionately from more disadvantaged areas, and from schools which were most disadvantaged before the pandemic”, the report states.

These pupils were also more likely to be from an ethnic minority group and have English as an additional language compared with both pupils who were already eligible for free school meals, and pupils who were not eligible for free school meals in either January 2020 or January 2021, it adds.

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