Any child in England whose parents receive Universal Credit will be able to claim free school meals from September 2026, the government has said.
Parents on the credit will be eligible regardless of their income. Currently, their household must earn less than £7,400 a year to qualify.
The government says the change will make 500,000 more pupils eligible, which the prime minister said would "help families who need it most".
Labour has faced scrutiny over plans to tackle child poverty, and is yet to decide whether to scrap the two-child benefit cap.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told the BBC ministers were "working as quickly as we can" on next year's plans to extend free school meals.
Ministers said the changes to free school meals would save parents £500 a year and "lift 100,000 children out of poverty".
On the two-child benefit cap, which prevents most families from claiming means-tested benefits for any third or additional children born after April 2017, Phillipson was asked if there were plans to change this policy.
The education secretary told BBC Breakfast it was not a "silver bullet" but "it was on the table."
She has previously said the government is looking at scrapping it but that it would cost a lot of money.
On free school meals, the Department for Education has set aside £1bn to fund the change up to 2029.
They have also pledged £13m to a dozen food charities across England to "fight food poverty", by redistributing food from farms.
Sir Keir Starmer said: "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."...read more
The Department for Education (DfE) has launched an AI powered tool for schools in England to benchmark their attendance records against similar schools.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced the launch last week, among with a handful of other measures to support the use of AI in schools.
The attendance reports tool has been made available to schools and responsible bodies through the View Your Education Data platform.
It uses AI to search the DfE’s datasets and identify 20 schools with similar characteristics, such as pupil demographics and location, and provide reports on their attendance figures. This enables the user to benchmark their own school’s performance and see where they are following good practice or need to improve.
The tool has been used in pilots before the full roll out and Phillipson said it is believed to be among the first of its kind in the word.
“Every mainstream school in the country can access reports right now to benchmark their performance against 20 similar schools,” she said. “They highlight what the schools are doing well, and where they need targeted intervention and support.
“That’s the kind of cutting edge insights schools need to get attendance moving.”
This follows her announcement early this year that the Government expects a big increase in the use of AI in schools, and a round of funding by the DfE to support developers in creating prototypes.
But Phillipson said last week that there is a need to build a larger evidence base on how AI can best support education.
She referred to the Government’s support for the EdTech Hub and the AI Observatory and Action Lab, and announced that it is funding the development of global guidelines for the use of generative AI in the sector...read more
Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce has called for urgent action to tackle “indefensible” reading inequality among young people.
The author and screenwriter wants the “invisible privilege” of being read to from a young age to be turned into a “universal right” for all children.
Hundreds of thousands of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are set to benefit from a national programme to improve access to PE and school sports.
Backed by an initial £300,000 for the first year, the Inclusion 2028 programme will work with a network of 50 Youth Sport Trust lead schools to provide expert training to teachers to help them create and deliver lessons that meet the diverse needs of all pupils - including those with physical, sensory, cognitive, communication or social and emotional needs.
In doing this, the programme encourages more varied and creative teaching methods that engage all learners – in turn, improving attendance and creating a school environment where all children can achieve and thrive. It will also provide leadership opportunities for 1,500 pupils who will develop activities for their peers as part of the programme, with schools across the country set to host events inspired by the Paralympic Games and Commonwealth Games. Alongside this, it will see 600 new extra-curricular clubs established offering pupils, including those with diverse needs, the opportunity to take part in a range of sports such as tennis, boccia and archery after the school day.
Taking part in physical exercise can support muscle and motor skills, as well as a sense of achievement, confidence, social connection and better mental health.
The programme supports the government’s Plan for Change in breaking down barriers to opportunity and ensuring every child and young person can achieve and thrive. It expects to work with over 8,000 schools supporting more than 240,000 pupils and 10,000 teachers and practitioners in England across the three years...read more
Children from poor households should be enrolled for free school meals automatically to prevent thousands going hungry, a report by MPs has found.
The education select committee called for the change "without delay", warning that pupils who should be fed free of cost are missing out because their parents have not signed up to the scheme.
As of June 2024, around 2.1 million children were known to be eligible for free school meals in England - nearly a quarter of pupils.
A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said the government "welcomed" the proposals and would carefully consider the recommendations.
In England, families are eligible to apply for free school meals if they are on universal credit and have a household income below £7,400 per year, after tax, alongside other benefits.
However, the committee heard evidence from an expert who estimated that one in 10 children in poverty are not receiving the meals.
Earlier this month, Kate Antsey, of the Child Poverty Action Group, told MPs, external that it was often because of language barriers or difficulty with the administrative process experienced by their parents.
Another estimate published, external in April 2024 by the think tank Policy in Practice put the number of children needlessly missing out on free school meals at 471,000.
The cross-party education committee said the government should change the current rules using the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill - which is currently making its way through Parliament - to remove the need for manual enrolment...read more
Families and children in every corner of England will soon benefit from free, daily breakfast clubs as the government is set to confirm the first 750 schools to offer the scheme, putting up to £450 a year back in parents’ pockets.
From as soon as April, chosen schools across all nine regions will kick-off the historic programme, with an early adopter phase set to inform the government’s landmark national roll out which will give all parents access to the scheme.
Delivering on promises made to working parents in the government’s manifesto, all primary aged children in early adopter schools will be able to access a free breakfast and at least 30 minutes of free childcare, every day, helping to support parents getting into work by dropping their children off half an hour earlier.
Schools are encouraged to offer healthy, varied and nutritious breakfasts, with examples from wheat bisks and porridge to fresh fruit and yoghurt. The early adopter schools also provide the perfect setting to host activities including arts and crafts, educational puzzles, reading and more.
Universal free breakfast clubs are central to the government’s Plan for Change, removing barriers to opportunity by making sure every child starts the school day ready to learn – with research showing the clubs can have a lasting impact on children’s behaviour, attendance and attainment.
Making sure no child starts school hungry, the scheme also has an important role to play in the government’s commitment to remove the stain of child poverty, as out of the 180,000 children who will benefit in the early adopter schools, around 67,000 attend schools in deprived areas.
The clubs come alongside a raft of measures designed to cut the cost of living for families, including the commitment to significantly cut uniform costs through a cap on branded items and complement government-funded childcare...read more
The Department for Education (DfE) is making £1 million available to support developers in creating AI tools to help with marking and feedback in England’s schools.
It said that each of the 16 tools will be targeted at a specific age and subject and that prototypes are expected to be developed by April of this year.
They will draw on an AI store of data, backed by £3 million from the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSIT), to ensure the accuracy of information used in training their algorithms It will pool and encode guidance on the school curriculum, lesson plans and anonymised pupil work that can be used by AI companies to train their tools.
DfE said these could perform activities such as providing individual feedback on handwritten essays, identifying common errors in maths equations and shaping lessons. They would all retain teacher oversight of the feedback to ensure their judgement and expertise would still be applied.
Raise standards
Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson said: “Through our Plan for Change, we are determined to drive high and rising standards across schools so we can break down the barriers to opportunity. Giving every child a cutting edge school experience is a crucial part of our mission.
“High quality teaching is the single biggest driver of high standards in schools and through harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence we can get teachers at the front of classrooms doing what they do best – teaching.”
DfE said that, according to a survey carried out through the TeacherTapp app, almost half of teachers are already using AI to help with their work. But most AI tools are not specifically trained on the documents that set out how teaching should work in England, and are not accurate enough to help teachers with their marking and feedback workload.
It added that training AI tools on the content store can increase feedback accuracy to 92%, up from 67% when no targeted data was provided to a large language model. That means teachers can be assured the tools are safe and reliable for classroom use...read more
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