Report calls for free school meal auto-enrollment

The Education Committee has urged the government to use its Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to remove the requirement to apply for free school meals for eligible children from low-income families.

In a new report, the Committee makes several recommendations for the Bill, such as ensuring that children receive mental health assessments when taken into care, improving supporting for care leavers to help them live independently, and on ensuring breakfast clubs are accessible for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND).

The report recommendations for the Department for Education (DfE) include that all children who are entitled to free school meals (FSM) should be automatically enrolled to receive them. One in ten children who are currently eligible miss out because of language barriers or difficulty with the admin process, and so auto-enrolling children for free school meals should they be eligible would remove barriers to entry.

Furthermore, the Education Committee recommends the government to ensure that free breakfast clubs are accessible for children with SEND. The report calls for “common sense” measures to be taken, such as ensuring that children with SEND who rely on home-to-school transport should be able to arrive early enough to join breakfast clubs, and that government funding should reflect this provision.

The report also advocates for better provision for children in care, such as every child receviing a physical, mental, and emotional health assessment by a registered medical practitioner after being placed in care. The report also recommends that the government should develop a national care offer that is consistent across the country.

Education Committee chair Helen Hayes MP said: “The Committee has made recommendations designed to strengthen support for the most vulnerable children in society, based on compelling evidence from experts and from young people who shared with us their deeply moving experiences of life in care.

“This report urges the government to tackle the postcode lottery of support offered to young people leaving care; to ensure that children whose parents struggle to put food on the table at home can get a proper meal at school; that children with SEND aren’t left out of breakfast clubs; and that children facing the traumatic experienced associated with being taken into care are properly cared for and their mental health assessed in a timely way.

“While we welcome the government’s ambition in this Bill, my colleagues and I from across the political parties were disappointed by how the government has rushed this bill through the House of Commons at the expense of time for property scrutiny. With such wide-ranging reforms that will have dramatic, last consequences for children and families, the DfE’s need for speed should not have been prioritised over diligent examination of evidence.”