Charities welcome half a million more children being eligible for free school meals

Charities and school leaders have welcomed free school meals being opened up to more than half a million extra children.

The government has announced it will make children in all households on universal credit in England eligible for free school meals from September 2026. Parents will be nearly £500 better off each year because of the change, the Department for Education said.

Currently, only pupils from households with an income of less than £7,400 a year are eligible for free school meals, meaning hundreds of thousands of children living in poverty do not have access to them. The latest figures, from January 2024, show 2.1m children were eligible for free school meals - 24.6% of all pupils in England.

The government has not said how it will fund another 500,000 children's school meals, which the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) calculated would cost about £1 billion and benefit 1.7 million children between Year 3 and Year 11 in the long run. The Department for Education claimed the eligibility expansion would lift 100,000 children across England completely out of poverty, but did not provide details of how.

However, the IFS said while it would lift 100,000 children out of poverty in the long-run, the "costs and the benefits of this policy are likely to be much smaller... and will not see anything like 100,000 children lifted out of poverty next year".

Charities broadly welcomed the change, with The Children's Society calling it a "practical, compassionate step that will make a real difference". Chief executive Mark Russell said it is a move his charity has been pushing for and would lift thousands of children out of hunger and help ease the pressure on households struggling to make ends meet.

The Child Poverty Action Group said it was "fantastic news and a game-changer for children and families". "We hope this is a sign of what's to come in autumn's child poverty strategy, with government taking more action to meet its manifesto commitment to reduce child poverty in the UK," Kate Anstey, head of education policy, said.

Read more:Starmer says govt 'will look at' scrapping two-child benefits limitExtra 50,000 children could be pushed into poverty over welfare changes School leaders' union NAHT welcomed the change but asked for the government to introduce "auto-enrolment so no child entitled to a free meal misses out". NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman added: "It's vital that this positive extension of free school meals is backed up by other tangible measures which help lift even more children out of poverty when the government's child poverty taskforce reports back later this year." At the end of May, the government delayed publishing its child poverty strategy until the autumn over Treasury concerns about the cost implications of ending the two-child limit on universal credit, which is expected to be part of the strategy.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch pushed Sir Keir Starmer on whether he will lift it at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday after the PM last week said the government "will look at" scrapping it, in his strongest indication yet that he will. On the free school meals announcement, Sir Keir said: "Working parents across the country are working tirelessly to provide for their families but are being held back by cost-of-living pressures.

"My government is taking action to ease those pressures. Feeding more children every day, for free, is one of the biggest interventions we can make to put more money in parents' pockets, tackle the stain of poverty, and set children up to learn.

"This expansion is a truly historic moment for our country, helping families who need it most and delivering our Plan for Change to give every child, no matter their background, the same chance to succeed." Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson called it a "giant step" towards ending child poverty..