Free School Meals

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Can I apply for free school meals?

You can apply for school meals if you receive:

• Income Support
• Income Based Jobseekers Allowance
• Income Related Employment and Support Allowance
• Child Tax Credit with an annual income of less than £16,190, provided they are not receiving Working Tax Credit
• the ‘Guaranteed’ element of the State Pension Credit
• Working Tax Credit run-on (paid for 4 weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit)
• Universal Credit with an annual net earned income threshold of less than £7,400

If you are an Asylum Seeker, you will need to apply directly to the school or contact the Access Team.

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How to apply

You can apply online.

Apply for free school meals

We can tell you straight away if you qualify. Please note, you may not be able to apply online if you fall into these categories:

• if your child attends a school outside the Bradford area - apply to the local authority where the school is
• if your child goes to Appleton Academy, Bradford Academy, Co-op Academy Parkland, Oasis Academy, St John's CofE Primary or a further education college - contact the school to apply

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School meals are free for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 - why do I still need to apply?

All children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 get free school meals, but if you receive one of the benefits from the list above you may also get help with:

• the cost of residential school trips (speak to your school about this)
• travel costs to school
• school uniform costs (speak to your school about this)
• music lessons at school (please contact your child's school for information)

For each child registered for free school meals, schools receive a pupil premium of £1,455 (Primary schools) or £1,035 (Secondary schools) per year. This money is to help your child achieve their best at school.

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What if my circumstances change?

If your circumstances change or your child changes school you need to tell us as your entitlement may change.

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Contacted by us - automatic award for Free School Meals

We have contacted parents/carers with a child/children at school who do not appear to have a current Free School Meal award and may be entitled to one. We will run a data matching exercise using pupil records and benefit/ Council Tax Reduction scheme data each year to identify the children who might be entitled to a Free School Meal.

What data will you use?

The data matching exercise does involve the processing of your personal data, but we do this because the council has a duty to provide Free School Meals to eligible children, and to help families access the support that they are entitled to.

We will use your surname, National Insurance number and your date of birth so that we can check if you qualify for free school meals. When we use your information, the government’s electronic free school meals checking service gives us a simple reply – YES or NO. This is how we check to see if you qualify for Free School Meals for your dependants.

We do not see any other information about you or your family when we use the checking service and we are also not allowed to ask anything else from the Department of Work and Pensions, or HMRC. The information is kept securely, and we must follow very strict procedures about how we look after your personal information under UK data protection law.

Free School Meals are only given to children attending schools (or school nurseries) over lunch time. If your child is 3 or 4 years old, accessing Free Early Learning at a private nursery or childminder, and you meet the criteria for free school meals, their provider will receive Early Years Pupil Premium. We will automatically recheck your child’s entitlement to Free School Meals when they start school.

How does the school benefit?

We will be letting schools know where there are children at school who qualify for Free School Meals, just as we do now for families that have already made an application for Free School Meals. If you qualify, they can order a meal for your child straightaway if you want them to have one. Schools can then include the number of children who qualify for Free School Meals in their Census Day information which they do in October.

If schools do this, they receive the right level of funding from the government to support children who qualify for free school meals. This funding is called Pupil Premium. For each child in primary school this means £1,480 and for each child in secondary school it is £1,050. We want to make sure that we do everything we can to help schools receive the funding they are entitled to.

Schools and Early Years providers use the Pupil Premium money to support the most disadvantaged children in school by helping them in lots of different ways. For example, some schools choose to offer help with practical things – reducing the cost of uniforms, books or school trips, or they may set up a free breakfast club so children can have breakfast before schools starts, making sure all children are in class on time and ready to learn. They may invest in extra resources to support teaching and learning or employ skilled and trained professionals to work with individual children like speech therapists or Learning Mentors. The money must be used to help and support children which is why it is so important.

Schools not included in this

Please note: If your child/ren attends one of the following schools Appleton Academy, Bradford Academy, Co-op Academy Parkland, Oasis Academy, St John’s C of E primary or for further education colleges in the district you will need to contact the school directly to apply for Free School Meals as they manage their own application process.

Does my child have to have a school meal?

Your child does not have to have a school meal, although one will be available free of charge at any time until your circumstances change, and you no longer qualify. However, the value of the meal is worth around £450 per year to you, and you could put the money you spend on a packed lunch towards other things. Also, children often will eat meals at school if they see their friends having them. They often try different foods at school rather than at home.

Do I need to do anything to claim these free school meals?

You don’t have to do anything now – we will organise everything by sending schools a secure and confidential list of children who qualify for Free School Meals.

Can I opt out of this?

If you don’t want us to use your information that’s no problem – we won’t use it if you don’t want us to. But schools are there to help you as a family and will not receive the right Pupil Premium funding unless and until Free School Meals have been awarded. Schools cannot use your information for anything else either just like the council and they are bound by the same rules as we are. They also do not single out any child as having free meals –your child would not be treated any differently to any other child in school.

If you do not want us to carry out the data matching exercise to check your child’s eligibility, or to enrol your child onto the free school meals scheme, you have the right to object at any time. However, if you do not contact us within three weeks of the date of the letter you receive informing you of the data matching exercise, we may have already begun the process of checking eligibility and processing entitlement. You can email your objection to [email protected] or contact us by telephone on 01274 432772. We will make a note of what you have told us, and we won’t carry out any further processing of your personal data during this year’s data matching exercise.

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Changes for Free School Meals

Following the roll-out of Universal Credit, children who were previously eligible for Free School Meals (FSM), became ineligible under the new benefits/low-earnings criteria. To protect these children, the government brought in ‘transitional arrangements’ which meant those children could continue to receive FSM.

This protection ended on 1 April 2025.

Children who are currently protected under the ‘transitional arrangements’ will continue to receive Free School Meals (FSM) until the end of their current phase of education (for example: moving from primary to secondary school).

Moving from primary to secondary school

A child at primary school will continue to get FSM until they move to secondary school, regardless of any changes to the families’ financial circumstances. At this point, the council will re-assess the eligibility of these children – this will happen towards the end of the academic year. If a child is no longer eligible, the family will be contacted.

Secondary Schools with a Sixth Form Attached

The council will ask schools in September 2025 for a list of children that were receiving FSM before they transferred from the main school into the sixth form. If a student is no longer eligible for Free School Meals, the family will be contacted.

New applications for Free School Meals from 1 April 2025

The existence of a protected sibling already in school does not automatically mean the new child will receive a Free School Meal. Families receiving Free School Meals under Transitional Protection may not meet the criteria when they apply for additional children, as their financial circumstances may have changed.

Where an applicant is eligible from 1 April 2025, the eligibility will be reviewed by the council at regular intervals. If a child is no longer eligible following a review, the family will be contacted to let them know that entitlement has ended.

If your child/children attend one of the following schools, the information above does not apply. You will need to contact the school directly for advice. Appleton Academy, Bradford Academy, Co-op Academy Parkland, Oasis Academy, St John's CofE Primary.