School meals and nutritional standards (England)

Free school meals

Free school meals are for children whose parents receive certain benefits (or who are receive those benefits themselves). These are:

• Income Support
• Income-based Jobseekers Allowance
• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance
• Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
• The guaranteed element of State Pension Credit
• Child Tax Credit (provided they are not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190)
• Working Tax Credit run-on – paid for four weeks after a person stops qualifying for Working Tax Credit
• Universal Credit - with household income of less than £7,400 a year (after tax and not including any benefits) from 1 April 2018, with transitional protections for existing claimants

Since September 2014, free school meals have been provided for all children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2.

In June 2025, the government announced that, from the start of the 2026 school year, every pupil whose household is on Universal Credit will be entitled to free school meals.

Since April 2018, households receiving Universal Credit with annual net earnings of over £7,400 no longer qualify for free school meals. The Government has estimated that, once benefits income was considered, this threshold equated to an overall household income of between £18,000 and £24,000.

Free school meals may also be available to pre-school children and those in school sixth forms, sixth form colleges, and further education colleges.

How many additional pupils will be eligible in September 2026?

The Department for Education estimates that “over half a million more” pupils will be eligible for free school meals once eligibility is expanded to all in receipt of Universal Credit.

Constituency or local authority-level estimates of the net effects of the policy change are unavailable. Alongside this briefing we are publishing an Excel file showing current FSM eligibility rates and numbers, by constituency. The file also includes data on the number of school-aged children in households claiming Universal Credit. Full source details are available in the briefing paper PDF and Excel file. Please get in touch with us at papers@parliament.uk if you would like to access the data in a different format.

How many pupils are currently eligible?

In January 2025, there were around 2.2 million pupils known to be eligible for FSM. This means there has been an increase in the proportion eligible, to 25.7% of state-funded pupils. The rate has increased each year since its low of 13.6% in January 2018.

The increase is driven by many factors including the Covid-19 pandemic and the continued effect of the transitional protections during the rollout of Universal Credit. These are policies which preserve the eligibility status of pupils who could get free school meals before the universal credit income threshold was introduced.

School breakfast clubs

Schools are not currently required to provide breakfast clubs, although many do so. Funding is available for schools in disadvantaged areas to receive a 75% subsidy for the food and delivery costs of breakfast club provision.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024-25 was introduced to parliament on 17 December 2024. The bill would provide for breakfast clubs to be available before school begins at all state-funded primary schools in England, and ensure that the existing school food standards apply to all state-funded schools, including at breakfast.

750 schools are taking part in an early adopter scheme from April 2025. Guidance for early adopter schools has been published by the Department for Education, as has a list of the chosen schools.

The government has announced that 2,000 new schools will be added to the free breakfast clubs scheme from April 2026.

Nutritional standards

Nutritional standards are in place for state-funded school meals in England. They aim to ensure that the food given to pupils is nutritious and of high quality, and to promote good health and eating behaviour.

In April 2026, the government opened a consultation on proposed changes to the school food standards. The proposed changes would further limit the inclusion of unhealthy foods on school menus, and introduce a new system to enforce compliance with the standards.

Funding for school meals is mostly provided through the Dedicated Schools Grant.

Meals during the school holidays

The Holiday Activities and Food Programme (HAF) is funded by the Department for Education and is being extended to all local authority areas in England. It covers Easter, summer, and Christmas school holidays and the government has announced funding for the programme to continue until 2029.

Education is a devolved issue and this briefing relates to mainly to England, although the rules on free school meals in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are provided.