Free school meals England 2023

Over two million pupils were eligible for free school meals in England in the 2022/23 academic year, compared with 1.89 million pupils in 2021/22. The issue of free school meals came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, when free school meals were replaced by a voucher scheme in the lockdown and Easter holidays. Although the voucher system was initially not supposed to extend to the summer holidays, a pressure campaign by English footballer, Marcus Rashford resulted in a government U-turn, on the issue, resulting in the voucher scheme covering the summer.

Number of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals in England from 2015/16 to 2022/23

Characteristic	Number of eligible pupils
2022/23	2,019,509
2021/22	1,897,449
2020/21	1,737,598
2019/20	1,440,788
2018/19	1,270,941
2017/18	1,106,633
2016/17	1,128,403
2015/16	1,142,043

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Release date

June 2023

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Region

United Kingdom (England)

Survey time period

2015 to 2023

Supplementary notes

The source adds the following information: 'Since 1 April 2018, transitional protections have been in place which will continue to be in place during the roll out of Universal Credit. This has meant that pupils eligible for free school meals on or after 1 April 2018 retain their free school meals eligibility even if their circumstances change. This has been the main driver in the increase in the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals as pupils continue to become eligible but fewer pupils stop being eligible.'
This statistic is using original data from the Government Digital Service and includes copyright material from © Crown, licensed under the Open Government License v3.0

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