How are schools encouraging parents of infant pupils to register for free school meals?
We recently surveyed our members to gather their opinions about universal infant free school meals, and found that 40% of the primary school leaders we asked had financial concerns about their introduction. I’ve answered a number of questions from our members about this myself, and it seems that schools are particularly worried about how their pupil premium funding will be affected if parents stop registering their children as eligible for free school meals. It looks like the government has picked up on these concerns about funding as well, and on Monday the Department for Education published this free school meals and pupil premium model registration form for schools. Our article discusses the different strategies schools are using to encourage parents to continue registering their children as eligible for free school meals. Members of our school leader service can read it here.