Report calls for further free school meal reform to tackle regional differences

The Education Policy Institute report found “significant variation” in how free school meals (FSM) are accessed across schools and councils in England.

While more than a quarter of local authorities either already have or are piloting automatic enrolment most do not have such a system in place and rely on parents registering.

Also, parents and carers in areas are required to re-apply themselves if their circumstances change after being found to be ineligible, while some councils periodically recheck eligibility through ‘batch re-checks’, which the think tank found “are more likely to support higher rates” of registration.  

Almost half of councils said they do not run batch re-checks for any schools in their area. Councils not storing the data or having an application process to ask for consent to store and check data has emerged as a barrier to achieving this.