NEARLY seven in 10 children in England whose families are entitled to universal credit (UC) are not eligible for free school meals, a report revealed today.

Families on the Tory-introduced benefit are much more likely to experience food poverty than other households, says the report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Households in England receiving UC must earn below £7,400 a year before benefits and after tax to qualify for free school meals.

This cap on means-tested free school meal entitlement means that about 1.7 million pupils in England whose families can claim UC — 69 per cent of this group — are not eligible for free lunches, the researchers said.

Nearly 30 per cent of families receiviing UC were classified as in food poverty in 2021-22, six times the rate among families not claiming UC, the report said.

The research suggests that expanding eligibility to all children whose families claim UC could cost about £1 billion a year in the longer term, which would represent a 70 per cent increase in spending on free school meals.

Raising the income cap to £20,000 a year for families on UC would be a less expensive reform and would bring about 900,000 children in low-income families into eligibility, the institute said.

National Education Union joint general secretary Kevin Courtney said: “All children deserve a hot, healthy meal each day to be able to learn and access the education they are entitled to.

“Food is as important to learning as books, pens or a chair to sit on.”

Mr Courtney said that restricting eligibility results in more children going hungry than those receiving free school meals and creates “unfair situations,” with families in similar circumstances receiving different levels of support.

He called on the government to commit to extend free school meal provision to all primary school children as a first step and to increase funding for school meals in line with inflation.

Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Geoff Barton said that providing free school meals to all children whose families are in receipt of UC is a “simple, immediate step the government could take to ease the impact of the cost-of-living crisis.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said that over a third of pupils in England now receive free school meals, up from one in six in 2010.