Schools will need to ‘top up’ funds for free school meals

Schools in England could face an annual shortfall of £310 million in covering the cost of free school meals unless urgent action is taken, according to a new report led by Northumbria University. 

Earlier this year, the government announced changes to the eligibility criteria for means-tested free school meals. All pupils from households in receipt of Universal Credit would benefit from free school meals – over 600,000 children according to government predictions. 

While the move was widely welcomed by those who have long campaigned for free school meals to become more universally accessible, experts were concerned that the complexity of the National Funding Formula and the free school meal-associated Pupil Premium would cause funding issues that would need to be urgently addressed. 

A new analysis of Department for Education data has found that state-funded primary and secondary schools in England could be left needing to find between £11,000 and £25,000 per year from their individual teaching and learning budgets to ‘top up’ the costs of free school meals during the 2026/27 academic year. This is equivalent to the cost of over 7,700 teachers’ salaries. 

Researchers from Northumbria and Lincoln universities and Alliance4Children modelled the financial impact of providing free school meals to those children already receiving them and the additional recipients on the budgets of state-funded primary and secondary schools using open data from the Department for Education. 

The government currently awards all state funded schools in England £2.58 per free school meal child to cover the cost of providing a meal each day, with an increase to £2.61 due in the 2025/2026 academic year. However, caterers face sharply rising costs and are charging schools an average of £3.00 per meal, a rate they say is below the real cost of providing a meal that adheres to national School Food Standards.  

The researchers found that combining the additional free school meals to pupils from households receiving universal credit with the existing free school meal costs would lead to a shortfall of over £310 million during the 2026/27 academic year across England – equivalent to the annual salary of more than 7,700 teachers – unless urgent action is taken to address the issue. 

Their modelling indicates that individual primary schools would have to find an average of £11,708 from their budgets in 2026/27, with secondary schools needing to find an average of £25,565. 

Professor Greta Defeyter OBE, Director of the Healthy Living Lab and Dean for Social Mobility Policy Engagement at Northumbria University explained: “Our findings are startling. Inflation, rising food prices and increases in national insurance have all impacted on the overall cost to caterers for providing free school meals and many schools are needing to take money from their own individual teaching and learning budgets to top-up the difference between the funding they receive from the government and the amount they are charged by the caterer.   

“When we modelled the data to include the additional pupils who will be entitled to receive free school meals in the future it is clear that this will lead to a national deficit of over £310 million per year which schools are needing to fund – this is equivalent to the cost of employing over 7,700 teachers.”