Primary Education: Free School Meals

Department for Education written question – answered at on 9 March 2016.

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Photo of Jamie Reed Jamie Reed Labour, Copeland

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of how many schools in (a) rural and (b) non-rural areas will be unable to provide free school meals to qualifying children as a result of the discontinuation of the universal infant free meals small school support grant.

Photo of Sam Gyimah Sam Gyimah The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education

To help small schools with the transition to universal infant free school meals (UIFSM), we have paid them an extra £32.5m over two years, on top of general spending on the policy which amounts to around £600m a year. In the recent Spending Review we also protected funding for UIFSM at £2.30 a meal. We are not aware of any school that is unable to meet its statutory obligations to provide free school meals either to its infants or to older children in receipt of qualifying benefits.

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