Universal Credit and free school meals

The government introduced means testing for free school meal entitlement for children in Year 3 and above from April 2018. Families on UC are no longer entitled to free school meals if their parents earn more than £7,400 a year from work.

In June 2018, general GMB union published figures it obtained from the Department for Education (DfE) using a freedom of information request showing up to 2.6 million children could lose out on free school meals by 2022.

The Children’s Society previously estimated the government’s £7,400 household earnings cap could lead to a million children who are growing up in poverty being denied a free school meal. The new figures reveal the DfE expects 1.1 million children to lose out by 2020, and 2.4 million children to lose out in 2022. The government’s model projects the figure could be as high as 2.6 million in that year. 

Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in 2018 shows that, overall, slightly more children from low-income households will be eligible for free school meals under UC once it is fully rolled out than would have qualified under the previous benefits system. However, this net change hides the fact that one in eight (around 160,000) of the 1.3 million children who would have qualified under the legacy system will be ineligible under UC.